Category: Uncategorized

STIRRED BUT NOT RESOLVED. "We do not claim to know whether there is any best story, any theory by which the apparent differential success of eukaryotes can be objectively probed and causally rationalized." http://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10278.full View in LinkedIn

MUDDYING THE WATERS. "In the penultimate chapter of The Origin of Species, Darwin wrote, ‘As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." Not his most helpful statement. https://lnkd.in/d3PHEKX View in LinkedIn

FAIRY STORY. "The eukaryogenesis story as usually told (and exemplified in our epigraphs) is a sort of metascientific narrative, invaluable in motivating and positioning new research activities of all sorts and organizing existing bodies of knowledge in our minds and our textbooks. However, it is as much rhetoric as fact, and the public, not to mention biologists themselves, may often conflate the two." https://lnkd.in/d6GwkCt View in LinkedIn

"THE MARCH OF PROGRESS is the canonical representation of evolution – the one picture immediately grasped and viscerally understood by all.... The straitjacket of linear advance goes beyond iconography to the definition of evolution: the word itself becomes a synonym for progress." (Stephen J Gould). https://lnkd.in/dKuX2e4 View in LinkedIn

Is chlorinated chicken about to hit our shelves after new US trade deal? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/29/britain-us-trade-deal-gm-food-eu-rules?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other View in LinkedIn

THE PERFECTION OF THE HUMAN BODY, in popular culture. https://lnkd.in/dZbTmVr View in LinkedIn

Ireland Passes Historic Legislation, Set to be the First Nation To Completely Cut Fossil Fuels https://futurism.com/ireland-passes-historic-legislation-set-to-be-the-first-nation-to-completely-cut-fossil-fuels/?utm_source=Digest&utm_campaign=1cf152db2d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_31&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_03cd0a26cd-1cf152db2d-246135165 View in LinkedIn

BOLT-ON EVOLUTION. If someone presented me with a design for a human foot that looked like the actual human foot, I probably would have thrown them out of my office. Clunky, messy, bolt-on evolution is why the designs from robotics companies look nothing like the human foot: it was not designed from scratch with a single purpose. All about exaptation: the acquisitions of functions for which they were not originally adapted. View in LinkedIn

MINDLESS EVOLUTION. "Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity — it is mindless and mechanistic. It has no goals; it's not striving to produce "progress" or a balanced ecosystem." http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/evo_32 View in LinkedIn

"EVOLUTION MYTHS: Evolution produces perfectly adapted creatures." https://lnkd.in/dFj4fee View in LinkedIn