evolution
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2007Let no one say I won't call out liberals when they're idiots about evolution. From the archives:
About a week about Matt Yglesias had a post about evolution where he wrote (italics mine):
Last but not least, nothing whatsoever of practical importance hinges on whether or not life on earth originated as a result of intelligent design. The theory is exceedingly silly pseudo-science, but it doesn't actually threaten anything. There is, moreoever, no reason to think it's especially crucial for the average citizen to have an accurate grasp of state-of-the-art biological theory. Most people don't…
illconsidered | September 21, 2007For most of us who believe in science as a great way to understand the physical realities around us, the question "Do you think the world is flat?" is hard to imagine as something to be asked seriously. But on The View, with millions of viewers, not only can it be asked, but the answer was "I don't know".
Seeing is believing!
(hat tip to Crooks and Liars)
[Update: youtube link is fixed now, pertinent material begins around the one minute mark]
pharyngula | September 21, 2007T. Ryan Gregory is turning into quite the coiner of useful terms. The latest: Dog's Ass Plots. It refers specifically to charts that try to make a case for the evolution of complexity by selectively encoding their creator's assumptions about the topic, and especially by oversimplifying the data in a way that skews their interpretation.
I suspect DAPs are a problem in other fields as well, though.
evolvingthoughts | September 20, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse, of Evolutionblog, has posted a rather snarky review of a book review by the historian and philosopher Ian Hacking that was published in The Nation. Jason titled his comment "How not to defend evolution". Here's my take on it.
Jason thinks that Hacking was pretentious, that he was not careful in his use of language, and that he was wordy. The essay was 4600 words long. Jason's response is 1520 words of part one of a two parter. Hmm...
The problem as I see it lies in the attitude of the sciences (and yes, I include mathematics amongst that tribe) to the humanities, and…
clock | September 20, 2007Earlier studies have indicated that a gene called FOXP2, possibly involved in brain development, is extremely conserved in vertebrates, except for two notable mutations in humans. This finding suggested that this gene may in some way be involved in the evolution of language, and was thus dubbed by the popular press "the language gene". See, for instance, this and this for some recent research on the geographic variation of this gene (and related genes) and its relation to types of languages humans use (e.g., tonal vs. non-tonal). Furthermore, a mutation in this gene in humans results in…
razib | September 20, 2007Remember those funny little Flores Hobbits? Carl Zimmer has followed the story like a master tracker over the years. In any case, Wrist bones bolster hobbit status:
Painstaking study of Homo floresiensis wrist bones shows that their wrists were far more primitive than ours -- suggesting that they were evolutionarily distinct from modern humans. The hobbits' wrists are so primitive-looking, say the researchers, that tracing our shared heritage would involve going back millions of years, perhaps to very birth of the genus Homo in Africa.
I wonder if John Hawks might comment soon (I recall…
sb admin | September 20, 2007Ok, so this is not my first blog post ever, but it is my first post as a member of Science Blogs. Unlike Groucho Marx, who did not wish to join any club which would accept him as a member, I am very excited to be here and very flattered by that invitation.
So some breif introductory messages...
To fellow Sciblings, I would like to say hello and I look forward to getting to know you as people and writers. I am already a fan of Tim Lambert at Deltoid, William Connolley at Stoat and Chris Mooney of The Intersection and I have come across many excellent articles from others here, so I am eager…
pharyngula | September 18, 2007I've just come back from my introductory biology classroom in which I've been trying hard to convince students of an important historical fact: the scientists, especially the geologists, who came up with the idea that the earth was old were working in a Christian tradition, and they came up with their ideas because they needed to explain the evidence, not because they were driven by theological considerations or because they had been bribed by the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. Sometimes you just have to put them in the shoes of a geologist in 1850 to get them to see the true motives. Then I…
razib | September 17, 2007If you read my post about Neandertals and cold climate, you should go read John Hawks' opinion.
pharyngula | September 16, 2007Laelaps explains the basic concepts of horse evolution. Now if only we could get the creationists to actually read that summary — they keep saying that the evolution of the horse has been disproven by the fossil record.
clock | September 16, 2007Too busy with the pseudo-moving right now, so just a quick set of links to other people's good stuff:
An amazing, fantastic post on Laelaps about horse evolution (also noted by Larry Moran). While at first glance, this post on Pondering Pikaia on naturally occurring hybrids in fish is not related, I beg to differ - she does mention other instances of hybridism in nature, including those in Equids - the well-known mules and hinnies, and not so well-known zebroids and others. And I just finished reading a book Hemi: A Mule, which, IMHO, compares quite favorably to Black Beauty - after all, it…
evolvingthoughts | September 16, 2007
All the strangers look like family
All the family looks so strange
The only constant I am sure of
Is this accelerating rate of change
— Peter Gabriel, Downside-Up, from the Ovo Album
Creek Running North has a delightful rumination on the lack of a balance of nature, in which he notes that
The sheer fecundity of the world conceals its vulnerability to change.
and
There is no balance of nature. Or if there is, it is the balance of a teetering rock on a pedestal stable enough to hold it for the moment.
This instability of the world bothers many people, or they ignore it and hold fast…
evolgen | September 16, 2007Carl Zimmer has a post covering three recent papers on gene duplication: one on amylase variation in humans, one on whole genome duplication in yeast, and one on duplications of genes in the Drosophila arizonae reproductive tract. In all three papers, results are presented showing the importance of duplicated genes in adapting to the environment.
Now, gene duplication isn't anything new around these parts. Those who know me know that I have a bit of an interest in gene duplication. Those who don't, well, consider yourself informed that I have a bit of an interest in gene duplication.
Given…
pharyngula | September 15, 2007There is a painful assumption of progress in many interpretations of evolution — and sometimes it's by people who ought to know better. T. Ryan Gregory finds a ghastly example of a figure that, by cherry-picking the data and doing a little suggestive ordering of the presentation, makes it look like there's a correlation between the amount of non-coding DNA and organismal complexity. Fortunately, he counters it with a much more useful chart (that I'm definitely stealing for the next time I teach genetics) with no such bias.
And then Larry Moran tops Gregory with an even worse figure. I don't…
evolgen | September 14, 2007
I'm sure by now you've heard of the ginormous spider web that was spun in Texas. The thing was huge -- 200 yards long -- and it was spun by multiple different species. That interspecific collaboration got Bill Poser thinking, so he blogged about it at Language Log:
The web covers hundreds of square meters. Not only was it built by hundreds of spiders, who normally build isolated webs and eat each other if they get too close, but entomologist Allen Dean reports that they belong to twelve different families! We're talking massive inter-species communication here folks, and not particularly…
clock | September 14, 2007Unfortunately, due to the Murphy's Law of conference dates, I will have to miss this fantastic meeting, because I will at the time be at another fantastic meeting, but if you can come, please do - registration will be open online in a few days.
Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity
The conference theme is about bringing scientists and humanities scholars to talk about ways that science is changing human life.
November 8th, 9th, and 10th, the National Humanities Center will host the second ASC conference.
And the program features a Who's Who list:
Thursday, November 8th
Frans de Waal
Martha…
jlynch | September 13, 2007I predict this may ruffle a few feathers. I don’t have time to comment myself, but I’m sure PZ, Jason and other can more than adequately weigh in. Avery Cardinal Dulles writes in the theo-con journal First Things:
Science, however, performs a disservice when it claims to be the only valid form of knowledge, displacing the aesthetic, the interpersonal, the philosophical, and the religious.
The recent outburst of atheistic scientism is an ominous sign. If unchecked, this arrogance could lead to a resumption of the senseless warfare that raged in the nineteenth century, thus undermining the…
evolvingthoughts | September 12, 2007
Recently, that is since 1975 or so, the view has arisen that a living thing is something that satisfies several conditions.
In 1966 George C. Williams introduced the notion of an "evolutionary gene" in his Adaptation and Natural Selection, which was, he said, a "cybernetic abstraction". This idea was taken up by Richard Dawkins in his The Selfish Gene.
Dawkins posited that evolution had some necessary and sufficient criteria:
There had to be replicators with the following properties:
Longevity (over evolutionary time)
Fecundity (more made than can survive)
Fidelity (nearly perfect…
purepedantry | September 12, 2007
In 1922, John Dewey, pragmatist philosopher and champion of Progressive education, wrote an article in The New Republic entitled "The American Intellectual Frontier." The subject was William Jennings Bryan's attack on evolution that would later culminate in the Scopes trial. The argument that Dewey made was not what you would think, however. Though he was most definitely part of the the Northeastern liberal establishment at the time, he did not dismiss Bryan's attacks as indicative of rural ignorance.
Instead, he made the argument that while he disagreed with Bryan, liberals had to take…
razib | September 12, 2007Nature has a new paper, Placing late Neanderthals in a climatic context:
...This study shows that the three sets translate to different scenarios on the role of climate in Neanderthal extinction. The first two correspond to intervals of general climatic instability between stadials and interstadials that characterized most of the Middle Pleniglacial and are not coeval with Heinrich Events. In contrast, if accepted, the youngest date indicates that late Neanderthals may have persisted up to the onset of a major environmental shift, which included an expansion in global ice volume and an…