History
gregladen | February 12, 2009
Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 (5 - 25) are distinctly different and contradictory origin stories. The biblical origin story represented in this text has long been known to resemble a set of Sumerian stories that mainly deal with a multitude of gods interacting (some of these gods are converted to humans in the biblical version). What is consistent about all of these stories is the relationship between status and labor, in the context of a labor-intensive agricultural system.
Genesis 1 is very systematic, resembling a post-hoc construction of events, and its main practical purpose may be to…
evolvingthoughts | February 12, 2009So today, which is in the antipodes (we being so far ahead of you northern western types) the 200th birthday of an obscure British naturalist gentleman, we address this myth:
Myth 2: Darwin did not explain the origin of species in The Origin of Species
Here's some folk claiming just that:
One of the ironies of the history of biology is that Darwin did not really explain the origin of new species in The Origin of Species, because he didn’t know how to define a species. [Futuyma 1983: 152]
… The Origin of Species, whose title and first paragraph imply that Darwin will have much to say about…
evolvingthoughts | February 12, 2009This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, but it turns out that a number of widely quoted sayings of Darwin are, in fact, invented. I would not be surprised to find out they are taken from reviews and other authors' summaries of Darwin.
evolvingthoughts | February 12, 2009In the Descent of Man, Darwin cites a paper published about 5 years earlier by W. R. Greg, which argues that natural selection is not active among humans (or, as the convention had it then, "Man"). It is most interesting that he does, because Greg is the intellectual father of all those who think that civilisation, and in particular medicine and poverty relief, leads to a degradation of health and virtue. In short, Greg is the father of social "Darwinism". What is Darwin's response? First he spends a dozen or so pages showing that in fact civilised human beings are still subjected to (…
gregladen | February 11, 2009As a child in Catholic school, and later in public school and being sent off to "release time" religious instruction, I had the opportunity to read most of the Old and New Testaments of the standard bible. Later, in junior high school, I became interested in comparative religion, and read it all again, together with some other texts that are not normally considered part of the Bible. Then all that fell to the wayside as I went off to do different things.
repost
In graduate school, I was lucky to have Irv DeVore as my primary advisor (eventually ... it did not start out that way). In fact…
pharyngula | February 11, 2009We're all going to get a surfeit of Darwin this week, but here's a little more. You have room for just one more bite, right? The Nature podcast has a full slate of Darwiniana, with several of his descendants speaking up, poetry, house tours, and a bit of popular media, with Paul Bettany talking about his upcoming role as the young Darwin in a new movie, Creation.
evolvingthoughts | February 11, 2009Oh, I forgot, due to the lack of internets at home, to link to my essay that I mentioned before:
Not Saint Darwin, in Resonance [PDF]
Consider this my "death of Darwin" piece.
grrlscientist | February 11, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [7:16]
evolvingthoughts | February 10, 2009We are going to hear a lot about Darwin this year, especially this month for his birthday (happy 200th, Chas. You don’t look a day over 150) and in November for the sesquicentenary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. And you will hear or read repetitions of a number of common myths about Darwin’s ideas and theories. I thought, being a fecal disturber, that I would try to clarify one of these below the fold, in celebration of his birthday. I'll do the others when I can. If you can think of any more, let me know.
Myth 1: Darwin did not believe in the reality of species
Myth 2:…
pharyngula | February 10, 2009I am astonished to discover that the fundamentalist pastor Grant Swank has a new article in which he promotes the long discredited tale of Lady Hope and Darwin's death-bed conversion. Unreal. It is completely false, and doesn't even ring true — those of us who are familiar with Darwin's writings wouldn't recognize the naive Jesus-praiser of Hope's account, and yet still this dishonest clown throws the fraudulent story of an evangelical con-artist as if it were true. He does put in a little disclaimer.
There are those who protest the above with extreme vehemence, concluding it is all…
pharyngula | February 10, 2009I strongly disagree with the arguments of this essay by Carl Safina, "Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live", even while I think there is a germ of truth to its premise. It reads more like a contrarian backlash to all the attention being given to Darwin in this bicentennial of his birth. The author makes three general claims that he thinks justify his call to "kill Darwin".
The first is a reasonable concern, that "equating evolution with Darwin" is misleading and can lead to public misunderstanding…but then Safina charges off into ridiculous hyperbole, that scientists are making…
oracknows | February 10, 2009Because of the fallout from the revelation by Brian Deer that very likely Andrew Wakefield, hero of the antivaccine movement but, alas for his worshipers, one of the most dishonest and incompetent scientists who ever lived, had almost certainly falsified data for his infamous 1998 Lancet paper that launched a decade-long anti-MMR hysteria that shows no signs of abating, I ended up not coming back to a story I was very interested in. Although this story is about Holocaust denial, the questions raised by it are applicable not only to history and Holocaust denial, but to any area of science or…
grrlscientist | February 10, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [8:34]
aardvarchaeology | February 9, 2009The Stockholm County Museum has just put my report on last summer's fieldwork at Djurhamn on-line (in Swedish). As you may remember, I blogged about it at the time (here, here and here). The results were actually a bit of a let-down after the sword I found in '07.
pharyngula | February 9, 2009I must recommend an excellent editorial in the Guardian. Somebody there gets it; all the "he said she said" journalism that we get is a failure of the media to get to the basic truth of a story.
There can be no such equivocation in the week of a survey which showed that only around half of all Britons accept that Darwin's theory of evolution is either true or probably true. In a democracy, citizens should respect each other's beliefs; and citizens have a right to express their beliefs. But in a democracy, a newspaper has an obligation to what is right. The truth is that Darwin's reasoning has…
aardvarchaeology | February 9, 2009On Saturday night I attended a talk by bright young philology and religion studies comet Ola Wikander. In 2003, at age 22, he published a Swedish translation of the Baal cycle and other Canaanite mythological matter for the lay reader. In the five years since then, he's done the Enuma Elish, the Chaldaean oracles, an essay collection on ancient languages, a popular introduction to Indo-europan studies and a historical mystery novel co-written with his dad. His PhD thesis on the relationship between certain themes in Ugaritic and Old Testament mythology is due in 2011. In his spare time he…
grrlscientist | February 9, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [9:08]
oracknows | February 5, 2009I guess even the Vatican responds to public pressure, if it's intense enough.
Last week, I noted an extremely disturbing story, a story that outraged me, a story that I would have found even more disturbing were I still a practicing Catholic but that I found disturbing enough even though I no longer am one. I'm referring to the difficult to explain decision on the part of Pope Benedict XVI to rehabilitate four heretical bishops who had been ordained without the Vatican's permission and who all belonged to a conservative Catholic organization known as the the Society of Saint Pius X. This…
evolvingthoughts | February 3, 2009
"Freaks of Nature: What Anomalies Tell Us About Development and Evolution" (Mark S. Blumberg)
This book came to me well recommended, and as far as the content goes, I am very impressed. The writing style, however, and the intended audience, are at odds with each other.
Blumberg is a developmental biologist who has a real grasp of the topic, is enthusiastic about it, and has a clear target in his sights. That target is sometimes misleadingly called "The Modern Synthesis", although a better term might be something like "gene centrism"; the view often expressed in words like "genes are the…
clock | February 2, 2009This shows how waves of humans spread throughout the world from their origins in Africa over a period of some 50,000 years. The video was created by geneticist Daniel Falush of University College Cork in Ireland and colleagues. For more info, go here: http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1000078
Soundtrack courtesy of Garageband