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EVOLUTION IS MESSY, and all living things are morphs, riddled with vestigial parts and bolt-on exaptations from the general tool kit of rebuilding and redesigning. Structures built by a committee, never from scratch. And most of that committee is viral. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson idealized the beauty of biological structures, in line with centuries of thinking about an ascendancy to Perfection. Actually, an ascendancy to a bigger, sometimes better, junk yard. View in LinkedIn

GOOD ENOUGH. "Response: It is true that natural selection weeds out individuals that are unfit in a particular situation, but for evolution, “good enough” is good enough." ("When I was at home, I was in a better place, but travellers must be content." (Touchstone, by Shakespeare). https://lnkd.in/djzVhcc View in LinkedIn

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

"MISCONCEPTION: “Evolution is like a climb up a ladder of progress; organisms are always getting better.” https://lnkd.in/djzVhcc View in LinkedIn