I've been meaning to get around to writing about female orgasms.
Philosopher of science Elizabeth Lloyd just published a new book in which she rejects the idea that they are an adapation. Then a paper was just published tying variation in the experience of orgasms to genes.
Unfortunately, I've been hideously overworked this week. Fortunately, Elizabeth Lloyd herself is no stranger to the blogosphere, and she's written an interesting post on the paper. Her conclusion: heritability does not equal adaptation, and some scientists need to think more carefully about the evolutionary implications of their work.
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Evolution of Female Orgasm is one of the ever-recurring themes on blogs. This post was first written on June 13, 2005. There were several follow-ups as well, e.g.,
here, here and here. Under the fold.
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It isn't at all unusual for the authors of scientific papers to leave a comment at a blog discussing their work — it's happened here quite a few times, and it's a good thing. It's a plus when they confirm what you've said or add more information to the discussion, and it's also wonderful when they…
Seed has an interview with Joan Roughgarden, somewhat controversial evolutionary biologist and author of Evolution's Rainbow : Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Here's the short summary of her basic thesis:
Joan Roughgarden thinks Charles Darwin made a…
People who don't understand modern evolutionary theory shouldn't be writing books criticizing evolutionary theory. That sounds like rather pedestrian and obvious advice, but it's astonishing how often it's ignored — the entire creationist book publishing industry demands a steady supply of…
Oh Carl, I think you mean "adaptation", instead of "adapation", although many people will by default "correct" the word when reading.
If quantity and quality of female orgasms are genetically controlled, the tantalizing idea would be that drugs could manipulate the phenomenon.
Can't do trackbacks, so here's the URL:
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/06/more-on-female-orgasm.html