Another Darwinian just so story deconstructed.

 

Listen: Scale-to-Feather Evolution Doesn’t Fly

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

On a classic ID the Future episode, Casey Luskin continues his review of Karl Giberson and Francis Collins’s The Language of Science and Faith. Giberson and Collins point to the feather as a prime example of a novel feature arising via blind evolution. According to them, it evolved from elongated scales. But Luskin points to recent findings from developmental biology that have led even many evolutionists to abandon the proposal. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Wicca: a brief history.

 Wicca is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorise it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices.

Wicca has no central authority figure. Its traditional core beliefs, principles, and practices were originally outlined in the 1940s and 1950s by Gardner and an early High Priestess, Doreen Valiente. The early practices were disseminated through published books and in secret written and oral teachings passed along to their initiates. There are many variations on the core structure, and the religion grows and evolves over time. It is divided into a number of diverse lineages, sects and denominations, referred to as traditions, each with its own organisational structure and level of centralisation. Due to its decentralized nature, there is some disagreement over what actually constitutes Wicca. Some traditions, collectively referred to as British Traditional Wicca, strictly follow the initiatory lineage of Gardner and consider the term Wicca to apply only to similar traditions, but not to newer, eclectic traditions.

Wicca is typically duotheistic, worshipping, and/or working with a Goddess and a God. These are traditionally viewed as the Triple Goddess and the Horned God, respectively. These deities may be regarded in a henotheistic way, as having many different divine aspects which can in turn be identified with many diverse pagan deities from different historical pantheons. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as the "Great Goddess" and the "Great Horned God", with the adjective "great" connoting a deity that contains many other deities within their own nature. Some Wiccans refer to the goddess deity as the "Lady" and the god deity as the "Lord"; in this context, when "lord" and "lady" are used as adjectives, it is another way of referring to them as a divine figure. These two deities are sometimes viewed as facets of a greater pantheistic divinity, which is regarded as an impersonal force or process rather than a personal deity. While duotheism or bitheism is traditional in Wicca, broader Wiccan beliefs range from polytheism to pantheism or monism, even to Goddess monotheism.

Wiccan celebrations encompass both the cycles of the Moon, known as Esbats and commonly associated with the Goddess (female deity), and the cycles of the Sun, seasonally based festivals known as Sabbats and commonly associated with the Horned God (male deity). An unattributed statement known as the Wiccan Rede is a popular expression of Wiccan morality, although it is not universally accepted by Wiccans. Wicca often involves the ritual practice of magic, though it is not always necessary.

File under "well said" LXXVIII.

 "The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interest. He becomes primitive again."

Joseph Schumpeter. 

I.D as heuristic?

 

Studies on Stickleback Fish Further Validate Engineering Models for Adaptation

Brian Miller

In my previous article, I described how studies of cichlid variation confirm the predictions of the engineering models for adaption (here, here). This article will describe how the models are further validated by research on stickleback fish diversity. Like cichlids, stickleback populations demonstrate constrained variation, natural genetic engineering (NGE), and phenotypic plasticity. 

Constrained Variation 

All studies of stickleback diversity demonstrate that variation is tightly constrained, and the sticklebacks’ underlying design plan or blueprint always remains intact. Hohenlohe et al. in a 2010 study documented how the same variation in traits and genetics appears repeatedly in separate populations:

Genomic regions exhibiting signatures of both balancing and divergent selection were remarkably consistent across multiple, independently derived populations, indicating that replicate parallel phenotypic evolution in stickleback may be occurring through extensive, parallel genetic evolution at a genome-wide scale.

Miller et al. in a 2019 study came to the same conclusion after analyzing the genetic differences between populations that inhabited lakes in the presence and absence of prickly sculpin, a fish that is a stickleback predator. Sticklebacks that interacted with prickly sculpin rapidly acquired similar alterations to hundreds of the same genes. 

Parallel differentiation of genomes between stickleback from the different lake types involved ~1.8% of the genome, overlapping 587 genes with a wide diversity of biological functions. Widespread adaptation is implicated because genetic drift is unlikely to cause repeated, parallel evolution in multiple evolving populations in association with a specific environmental feature. These extensive changes underscore the rapid and profound effects of a seemingly simple biotic interaction on stickleback evolution.

Natural Genetic Engineering

The two studies demonstrate that sticklebacks adapt genetically to environmental changes predictably and rapidly. These observations suggest that NGE might be driving targeted genetic alterations. 

Other research has identified NGE more explicitly. Ishikawa et al. in a 2019 study discovered that multiple stickleback species duplicated the Fads2 enzyme allowing the species to better synthesize the essential fatty acid DHA. This enhanced ability allowed them to colonize DHA-deficient freshwater environments. The authors suggest that the duplications were facilitated by NGE, possibly the relocation of transposable elements. 

Future research will almost certainly uncover additional examples of variation resulting not from random mutations but from targeted genetic rewriting.

Phenotypic Plasticity

Other investigators identified examples of phenotypic plasticity. McCairns and Bernatchez in a 2010 study discovered that sticklebacks inhabiting freshwater and saltwater zones of a large estuary measure the salinity of the water. They use this information to optimally regulate the expression of genes controlling the transport of salt ions, so the fish can quickly adapt to salinity changes. 

Baker et al. in a 2015 study demonstrated that stickleback females track internal physiological information (e.g., lipid supply and liver glycogen level) and environmental cues such as availability of food and population density. Different cues initiate adjustments to such reproductive parameters as time of breeding, egg size, and clutch or brood size. The alterations improve the likelihood for the population’s continued survival. The researchers also discovered that individual fish coordinate the fine-tuning of multiple traits to ensure optimal reproductive success:

…traits are linked both genetically and functionally, and thus expressed plasticity in one trait would seem to require simultaneous plastic expression in at least one other trait, and perhaps more.

As a final example, Tibblin et al. in a 2020 study raised sticklebacks in an aquarium with different color backgrounds. The investigators also mimicked the presence of predators by chasing fish with a dip-net and introducing chemical cues mimicking the presence of Pike, which is a natural predator. Both color and predatorial stimuli triggered changes in the dorsal coloration that assisted the fish in avoiding detection. 

The Toppling of Evolutionary Icons

Cichlid and stickleback fish are two of the most iconic examples of adaption that biologists present as evidence for the plausibility of evolutionary processes driving large-scale transformations. Yet research over the past few decades supports the opposite conclusion. Evolutionary and adaptive processes are constrained in cichlids and sticklebacks, as in all complex organisms, to only minor alterations to existing traits or to the loss or duplication of an existing structure. Most adaptation results from engineered processes that leave little to chance. The belief in the limitless creative capacity of evolutionary processes now rests on little more than blind faith in the philosophy of scientific materialism.  

A theory in crisis?

 

Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis?

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

A new ID the Future episode spotlights The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith, and specifically, an essay in the new anthology by biologist Jonathan Wells, “Is Darwinism a Theory in Crisis?” As Wells and host Casey Luskin note, the essay title alludes to philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn’s influential 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argued there that if one studies the history of scientific revolutions, one finds that when the scientific evidence has begun to turn against a dominant scientific paradigm — when its days are numbered — its adherents do not simply concede defeat. Instead they use all their institutional power to suppress dissent and punish proponents of any competing paradigm.

This is the period of crisis, which can last for years and even decades. Wells contends that modern evolutionary theory is a current instance of a dominant paradigm in crisis. He briefly makes the case in this episode, and at greater length in his essay, which appears in the newly released anthology from Harvest House, edited by William Dembski, Casey Luskin, and Joseph Holden. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Superhuman tech v. Darwin.

 

Studies on Labrid Fish Confirm Operational Gravity Well Model for Adaptation

Brian Miller

In my previous article, I described how studies on insect wings validate engineering models for adaptation. Now I will further demonstrate the predictive power of the operational gravity well model (OGWM) from studies on labrid fishes (wrasses). 

Predictions of the Model 

OGWM presupposes that an organism’s design plan demonstrates a coherent logic based on engineering principles. That plan is founded on an underlying architecture or blueprint that is immutable. Any mutational or environmental perturbation that alters the core framework will debilitate the organism. 

The design plan will also include parameters that can vary to help a population to adapt to changing circumstances. For instance, a finch’s beak will always maintain the same basic structure, but predetermined variables associated with that structure can hold a bounded range of values. Examples include a beak’s width, length, thickness, sharpness, and material content. 

The model also predicts that anytime a new design plan is identified, it will appear in the fossil record suddenly without a series of ancestors leading back to a common ancestor shared with other species whose body plans are based upon different architectures. During an organism’s tenure on earth, only the adjustable variables can change; the underlying design logic will always remain intact. Studies of labrid fishes (wrasses) confirm all these predictions.

Four-Bar Linkages

The jaws of wrasses conform to a clearly identifiable design logic. Westneat et al. in a 2005 study identified the underling design of the jaws as the four-bar linkage motif commonly implemented in human engineering:

In addition to the jaw lever, a linkage system in the jaws (figure 3i–k) transmits lower jaw rotation to the maxilla and the sliding upper jaw, the premaxilla (Westneat 1994). This is a four-bar linkage, an engineering design that is used in bolt cutters, typewriter keys, heavy construction equipment and many other human-engineered machines that precisely transfer force or motion.

The investigators catalogued multiple versions of the four-bar linkage in different labrid species. Each version is based on a different design architecture that is subject to tight “physical constraints.” Any fundamental change to any of the underlying designs must correspond to another “engineering system” replacing the original: 

These taxa with additional joints and links in the transmission system represent engineering breakthroughs in cranial design…

Skull mechanisms such as levers and linkages are subject to physical constraints (Westneat 2003), which may only be broken when a fundamentally new engineering system for feeding arises.

The constraints do not solely correspond to the architecture of the bones and their connective tissues. Westneat’s 2003 article demonstrated how each version of the linkage system also requires tailored jaw muscles:

Adductor jaw muscles with different mechanical designs must have different contractile properties and/or different muscle activity patterns to coordinate jaw closing.

Taking the investigators’ statements at face value, they seem to acknowledge that one feeding system cannot fundamentally change into another gradually. Instead, any transformation requires multiple coordinated modifications at once. The extent to which the authors recognize the implications of their conclusions is difficult to say. 

Fossil Record and Common Ancestry

In addition, species with new jaw designs always appear in the fossil record suddenly (aka punctuated appearances). And the same design often occurs multiple times independently (aka convergence). Westneat et al. commented:

The macroevolutionary history of labrid fishes on global reefs has involved species divergence in skull structure within a range of mechanically feasible forms, creating an unparalleled higher-level pattern of convergence that is occasionally punctuated by major transitions in engineering design.

Not only do these observations perfectly match OGWM’s predictions, but they demonstrate how the assumption of common ancestry directly conflicts with the fossil record and taxonomy. The distribution of the different jaw designs does not fit into a consistent evolutionary tree. Nor could the different jaws have gradually evolved even once, let alone multiple times. Instead, the same jaw design was independently implemented in different species to achieve the same goals, such as eating similar types of food. The distribution pattern does not conform to the predictions of an undirected evolutionary process, but it demonstrates the foresight and creative power of an intelligent designer.  

Why Darwin's God is the God of the gaps.

 

Francis Collins’s The Language of God 15 Years On

Jonathan Witt@JonathanRWitt

Francis Collins’s bestselling The Language of God turned 15 this year, and with the author back in the news, it’s a good time to review his case for theistic Darwinism and consider what 15 years of subsequent research have done to strengthen or undermine those arguments. 

He became a household name in 2000 when he and Craig Venter announced that their teams had together successfully mapped the 3.1 billion letters of the human genetic code. The Language of God appeared six years later, making a case for both Darwinian evolution and a transcendent Creator.

The evolution Collins argues for involves no direct intelligent input after the origin of the universe until the origin of humans, and yet he also makes a case for a specifically Christian theism, arguing not only for a Creator but also for the possibility of miracles, the deity of Christ, and a literal resurrection. He insists that a scientist can believe these articles of Christian doctrine without checking his brain at the door.

The mainstream media emphasized the book’s insistence that Darwinism is no threat to Christianity and that Darwinism explains a range of physical evidence better than does either creationism or intelligent design. But what has gone begging for ink is a feature of the work hidden in plain sight: Francis Collins makes a scientific case for intelligent design.

According to the theory of intelligent design, which extends from the origin of matter to the origin of mind, an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain features of the natural world. In chapter nine Collins argues against intelligent design in biology, a point the media duly emphasized; but elsewhere he argues that an intelligent cause is the best explanation for certain other features of the natural world.

Collins’s Case for Cosmic Design

He begins Chapter 3, “The Origins of the Universe,” by reviewing 20th century discoveries in physics and cosmology, many of which reinforce Christian teaching. For example, whereas scientists of the 19th century generally believed that the universe was eternal, a growing body of evidence in the 20th century convinced them that the universe began about 14 billion years ago, a theory, Collins notes, nicely in harmony with the biblical doctrine of creation ex nihilo — that is, creation out of nothing.

The chapter then summarizes the fine-tuning problem. This is the growing body of evidence suggesting that the physical constants of nature (including gravity, electromagnetism, and the mass of the universe) are exquisitely calibrated to allow for complex and even advanced life. A very tiny difference in any of these and life in the universe would be impossible.

Collins lists the three live explanations for fine tuning: (1) There are a multitude of universes in addition to our own, perhaps an infinite number, and at least one, ours, was bound to have the right physical constants for advanced life; (2) We’re just incredibly lucky; and (3) The physical constants look fine tuned because they were fine tuned. That is, they were designed.

He put his money on the third one, the design hypothesis, and he supports that conclusion by appeals to physical evidence and standard methods of scientific reasoning. Regarding the two non-design options, 1 and 2, he says, “On the basis of probability, option 2 is the least plausible. That then leaves us with option 1 and option 3. The first is logically defensible, but this near-infinite number of unobservable universes strains credulity. It certainly fails Occam’s Razor.”

Lest his guarded language obscure the fact that he’s chosen door number three, he adds, “It could be argued … that the Big Bang itself seems to point strongly toward a Creator.”

His appeal to the Big Bang and the fine-tuned cosmos serves as one of his main design arguments in the book. We should pause and register the significance of this. In our present intellectual climate, where scientists have been harassed and even fired for advocating intelligent design, and the idea is routinely attacked in news stories and popular books by “new atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, it’s no small matter that a bestselling book by the former head of the Human Genome Project, and subsequently the head of the National Institutes of Health, makes a scientific case for intelligent design.

Collins’s Flaw

Why hasn’t this garnered more media attention? In part because Collins accepts the misleading description of ID that many of its critics employ. According to them, intelligent design is a purely negative argument aimed primarily against biological evolution, and is coupled to a fallacious God-of-the-gaps theology.

These ID critics insist that design theorists poke holes in Darwinism and then, in a rush to judgment, insist that the holes prove that God designed life. More broadly, they claim that ID proponents supposedly argue from our present ignorance of any adequate material cause of certain natural phenomena directly to intelligent design.

But this isn’t so. Design theorists in biology do offer an extensive critique of Darwinian theory, including various contemporary variations on it, but they also offer positive evidence for intelligent design. They argue from our growing knowledge of the natural world (in biology, chemistry, physics, and cosmology), and from our knowledge of the only kind of cause known produce information or irreducibly complex machines (both found at the cellular level): intelligent agents.

Collins accuses design theorists of making arguments from ignorance, but actually it is Collins and other critics of intelligent design who do so when they make certain bad-design argument for blind evolution over against intelligent design. Collins does so, for instance, when he argues that the presence of “junk DNA” strongly suggests a blind evolutionary process rather than anything a divine engineer would have created. That argument rested on scientists’ ignorance of what purpose might be served by DNA that doesn’t code for proteins. But in the intervening years researchers have discovered numerous functional roles for this non-coding DNA. 

To his credit Collins eventually conceded that his use of the term “junk DNA” was misguided. “I’ve stopped using the term,” he told Wired magazine. And as biologist Jonathan Wells notes, “Since then, the evidence for function in non-protein-coding DNA has vastly increased. The first line of one recent article in a scientific journal is, “The days of ‘junk DNA’ are over.”

Chapter 3 of The Language of God contains another argument from ignorance. Collins refers to the “backward wiring” of the vertebrate eye, characterizing it as flawed from an engineering perspective because it forces light to pass through the nerves and blood vessels on its way to the eye’s light sensors. He says this bungled design is evidence for neo-Darwinism’s catch-as-catch-can evolutionary process, and evidence against the idea that a wise designer optimally engineered this organ. “The design of the eye does not appear on close inspection to be completely ideal,” he writes, and its imperfection seems “to many anatomists to defy the existence of truly intelligent planning of the human form.”

This is a favorite argument of Dawkins’s, and of Darwinists generally. However, geneticist Michael Denton and others have shown that the wiring improves oxygen flow, an important advantage not achievable by the tidier approach demanded by Dawkins. They have called attention to this point repeatedly, but The Language of God shows no evidence that Collins is aware of it. He neither addresses it nor so much as mentions it. (Dawkins and other Darwinists generally avoid discussing it.) In this case, then, it’s an argument from ignorance of why the vertebrate eye might benefit from “backward wiring,” and the ignorance appears almost willful.

Collins’s Flagellum

Collins also betrays unfamiliarity with the work of leading design theorists in the way he handles the scientific controversy surrounding a microscopic rotary engine called the bacterial flagellum. The flagellum is a favorite of design theorists because they are convinced that attempts to explain its origin apart from design are manifestly inadequate, and because images of the flagellum practically scream design.

In his book Darwin’s Black Box, Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe made this sophisticated molecular machine famous by arguing that it was “irreducibly complex” and therefore evidence of design. He used the simple mechanism of a mousetrap as an example of irreducible complexity. If any part of the mousetrap is missing (the base, spring, hammer, holding bar, or catch), the trap cannot work. The mousetrap, then, is irreducibly complex. It is either complete, or it is not a functioning mousetrap.

In the same way, the bacterial flagellum, composed of dozens of protein machines, needs every one of them in place or it doesn’t work.

Here is how irreducible complexity relates to evolutionary theory: A conscious designer can pull together several non-functioning parts and assemble them into a functional whole, but blind evolution — which excludes intelligent guidance — must progress by one slight, random functional mutational improvement at a time. So how could such a process build an irreducibly complex motor one part at a time if the motor cannot propel at all until all its parts are in place?

Using the arguments of leading evolution apologist Kenneth Miller and others, Collins suggests that nature could have co-opted simpler molecular machines to create the bacterial flagellum, and he points to the “type three secretory apparatus” as evidence of such an indirect pathway (p. 192). But as it turns out, and as design theorists have emphasized, there are three crucial problems with this explanation.

One, the micro-syringe at best accounts for only ten proteins, leaving thirty or more unaccounted for; and these other thirty proteins are not found in any other living system. Second, as a wider body of literature suggests, the system probably developed after the more complicated flagellum, not the other way around.

Third, even if nature had on hand all the right protein parts to make a bacterial flagellum, something or someone would still need to assemble them in the precise temporal order the way cars are assembled in factories. How are such tasks presently accomplished? As biologist Scott Minnich and philosopher of science Stephen Meyer explain, “To choreograph the assembly of the parts of the flagellar motor, present-day bacteria need an elaborate system of genetic instructions as well as many other protein machines to time the expression of those assembly instructions.”

Collins never mentions any of this. In these and other instances, he comes across as having never engaged the best arguments for intelligent design in biology. To briefly note one other example, he muffs the issue of testability, mistakenly asserting that ID arguments are not testable.

These constitute significant weaknesses in Collins’s case against intelligent design, but as I will show tomorrow, perhaps the most glaring one is this: he flatly contradicts himself at crucial points.

Editor’s note: This essay is a substantially revised and updated version of a book review that first appeared in Touchstone Magazine.

Greek fire: a brief history.

 Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used by the Roman Empire beginning c. 666. Used to set fire to enemy ships, it consisted of a combustible compound emitted by a flame-throwing weapon. Some historians believe it could be ignited on contact with water, and was probably based on naphtha and quicklime. The Byzantines typically used it in naval battles to great effect, as it could supposedly continue burning while floating on water. The technological advantage it provided was responsible for many key Byzantine military victories, most notably the salvation of Constantinople from the first and second Arab sieges, thus securing the Empire's survival.

The impression made by Greek fire on the western European Crusaders was such that the name was applied to any sort of incendiary weapon, including those used by Arabs, the Chinese, and the Mongols. However, these mixtures used formulas different from that of Byzantine Greek fire, which was a closely guarded state secret. Byzantines also used pressurized nozzles to project the liquid onto the enemy, in a manner resembling a modern flamethrower.

Although usage of the term "Greek fire" has been general in English and most other languages since the Crusades, original Byzantine sources called the substance a variety of names, such as "sea fire" (Medieval Greek: πῦρ θαλάσσιον pŷr thalássion), "Roman fire" (πῦρ ῥωμαϊκόν pŷr rhōmaïkón), "war fire" (πολεμικὸν πῦρ polemikòn pŷr), "liquid fire" (ὑγρὸν πῦρ hygròn pŷr), "sticky fire" (πῦρ κολλητικόν pŷr kollētikón), or "manufactured fire" (πῦρ σκευαστόν pŷr skeuastón).

The composition of Greek fire remains a matter of speculation and debate, with various proposals including combinations of pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium phosphide, sulfur, or niter. In his history of Rome, Titus Livy describes priestesses of Bacchus dipping fire into the water, which did not extinguish, "for it was sulphur mixed with lime."

Why I turned my back on the new Gods

 The human brain is hardwired for worship. Thus there are no atheists in the absolute sense. Even those claiming to be absolute atheists. We are only atheists with respect to our neighbors' Gods but each of us thinks of our own Gods as real,as worthy for reasons that satisfy us if not our associates.

One of the main reasons that I find the appeals of 'nontheists' so unpersuasive is that I once sacrificed at the altar of the Gods they are calling me to and forsook them on account of the superiority of the original God JEHOVAH. Nationalism (black nationalism to be specific),politics, money, intellectuals,chance and necessity,pleasure. They all failed to keep their promises.

One notable way that JEHOVAH has shown his superiority is that he is the only God who has taught his people to live in peace. If as God one cannot bring peace to ones own community of followers how can we trust you to bring peace universally.

Revelation15:4PHB"Who will not reverence you, LORD JEHOVAH, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. Therefore, all the nations will come and will worship before you, because you are true.”

Minimalism with Chinese characteristics?

Tang ping (Chinese: 躺平; pinyin: tǎng píng; lit. 'lying flat') is a lifestyle choice and social protest movement in China by some young people in China who reject societal pressures for hard work or even overwork (such as the 996 working hour system, which is generally regarded as a rat race with ever diminishing returns), and instead choose to "lie down flat and get over the beatings" via a low-desire, more indifferent attitude towards life. Novelist Liao Zenghu described "lying flat" as a resistance movement, and The New York Times called it part of a nascent Chinese counterculture.

Unlike the hikikomori in Japan (who are socially withdrawn), these young Chinese people who subscribe to "lying flat" are not socially isolated, but merely choose to lower their ambitions and simplify their goals, still being fiscally productive for their own essential needs, and prioritize psychological health over materialism.

Wiliam Shakespeare: a brief history.

 William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.

Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.

Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".