Why Evolution is True “David Sloan Wilson loses it again” This is the guy who is the Past President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and he just cannot seem to keep his comments focused on science. There are some really great ideas discussed here, particularly about the nature of selfish genes and the Read More
A Minor Post, Group Selection, Kin Selection, Natural Selection, WebThe Chronicle of Higher Education “Do Birds Have Emotions?” Very interesting animal stories here, so grisly and some inspiring. I never knew about the cooperation between guillemots, but the emotional signs that Birkenhead describes make sense in the context of cooperation: the real purpose of emotions, it seems, is to balance out the costs and Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Articles, Cooperation, EmotionThe Chronicle of Higher Education “EvoPolitics” I really appreciate Barash’s reinforcement of the “is-ought” distinction: it is amazing to me how many people still commit the naturalistic fallacy. This is a really enlightening historical review, but I think that it gets the present-day implications wrong. The defining question about the political implications of evolutionary theory Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Multilevel Selection, PhilosophyThe Chronicle of Higher Education “Evolution in the Classroom: Here We Go Again!” Classic and entire appropriate commentary on Richard Dawkins here!!
A Minor Post, Articles, Creationism, Evolution Education, ReligionThe Chronicle of Higher Education “The Unabomber’s Pen Pal” What I think is really interesting about Kaczynski’s critique is that he is fearlessly pointing out the problems with technology, challenging others to provide a counter-narrative. For the most part, there is no counter-narrative. You are either “with us or against us” when it comes to Read More
A Minor Post, Activism, Articles, Belief, Cultural Evolution, EthicsBack in March, David Barash used his regular column in the Chronicle of Higher Education to unveil “The Truth about the Temple of Templeton“. Reacting to an increasingly-large funding stream coming out of the Templeton Foundation, Barash questions whether receiving money from this religiously-affiliated, pro-business group will lead to tainted science. Barash begins his critique by Read More
A Major Post, Articles, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Evolution, Grants & Funding, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, ReligionThe New York Times “With Teamwork, Humans Best Other Primates“
A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Human Uniqueness, Primates, Primatologyio9 “Could Humans Evolve into a Giant Hive Mind?” What I find fascinating about this nice journalistic piece is the biases in particular scientists that it exposes once it asks for uninformed speculation. Most prominently, Joan Strassman betrays her biases about relatedness (we have to be highly related to be a superorganism, period) and the Read More
A Minor Post, Adaptation, Cooperation, Human Uniqueness, Prediction, Superorganisms, WebNature News “Lizard’s future hinges on voluntary measures” What is so annoying about this policy is that it ignores the fact that landowners could have been “volunteering” to not destroy habitat well before this species became endangered. Allowing “voluntary measures” to trump the mandates of the Endangered Species Act takes the teeth out of the Read More
A Minor Post, Conservation Biology, Law, Public Policy, WebScience “Endophytic Insect-Parasitic Fungi Translocate Nitrogen Directly from Insects to Plants” What I find fascinating about this story is how a fungus that parasitizes one species can use that ability to form a mutualism with a plant host. I wonder whether there is a value-added feature of this parasitism: are the parasitized insects potential parasites Read More
A Minor Post, Articles, Coevolution, Host-Pathogen Evolution, Mutualism, Parasitism