The final chapter of The Origin of Species — Darwin’s ‘Recapitulation and Conclusion’ — states the case for evolution as well as any short account I have ever read. It’s tightly written, it argues a case, it summarises all the different kinds of evidence and shows clearly why they are important. It’s pithy, confident: great stuff.
Which [...]
Posts tagged with ‘evolution’
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‘The Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin
27 August 2008 – 1:23 pm
Links
26 July 2008 – 11:00 pm
Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Early Birds Shake Up Avian Tree of Life
via Pharyngula/Tangled Bank, exciting parrot/falcon/songbird news! 'This analysis effectively redraws avian phylogeny, or family tree, thus shaking up our current understanding of the early, or "deep", evolutionary relationships of birds.'
(del.icio.us tags: phylogeny birds evolution taxonomy )
Links
3 July 2008 – 11:00 pm
What critics of critics of neo-creationists get wrong: a reply to Gordy Slack - The Panda’s Thumb
‘Here is a short list of things we have discovered or confirmed in the last 50 years or so about the origin of life. In my opinion all of these points have reached high enough confidence that they are [...]
Links
2 July 2008 – 11:00 pm
The Royal Society - Article
Interesting. 'It is widely believed that Charles Darwin avoided publishing his theory of evolution for many years… This essay demonstrates that Darwin's delay is… overwhelmingly contradicted by the historical evidence.' via Carl Zimmer
(del.icio.us tags: C19th CharlesDarwin evolution history )
‘Bones, Rocks and Stars’ by Chris Turney
5 May 2008 – 10:21 am
Or to give it its fuller, more informative title: Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened. It is what it sounds like: a brief (under 200 pages, including the index) overview of dating technologies for a general audience: radio isotope dating, dendrochronology, Antarctic ice cores and so on. And I enjoyed it; [...]
Links
3 May 2008 – 9:08 am
Moving On Up!
Via Pharyngula: Jack Chick explains evolution. Which is weirdly fascinating.
(del.icio.us tags: comics evolution propaganda religion )
Japanese Matches - Too Cute To Burn
‘It is hard to believe they are real matches and not little edible sugar-candies. Of course that isn’t likely as it wouldn’t go over well with parents, but, on the other hand, [...]
Links
2 May 2008 – 2:15 pm
Amoebas may vomit E. coli on your greens - New Scientist
‘A laboratory study has found that food pathogens survive being eaten by protozoa living on spinach and lettuce. The temporary asylum might help bacteria stick onto leafy greens or resist efforts to kill them before packaging.’
(del.icio.us tags: amoebae bacteria )
Ancient bird is missing link to [...]
Ospreys, monogamy and stupidity
16 April 2008 – 3:07 pm
There’s an exceptionally stupid article by Magnus Linklater in the Times today. He talks about the recovery of the British osprey population over the past 50 years with reference to their apparent monogamy and long-term pair bonds. The article ends:
What the osprey demonstrates is that, whatever indiscretions may be committed in the course of [...]
‘40 Days and 40 Nights’ by Matthew Chapman
21 September 2007 – 7:28 am
Full title: 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin®, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania. In other words, it’s about the trial in Dover, Pennsylvania where the school board tried to put Intelligent Design into the biology classes and were found to be in breach of the constitutional separation of church [...]
‘Monkey Girl’ and teaching evolution in the US
25 March 2007 – 1:00 pm
I’ve just finished Monkey Girl by Edward Humes, an account of the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District court case about the constitutionality of teaching Intelligent Design in biology lessons. I was slightly underwhelmed by the book—you can read my review here—but the subject is interesting. How do you manage science education in a country [...]
Evolved belief?
6 March 2007 – 3:07 pm
Scavella asks:
And the real question is why. What evolutionary purpose has this tendency, whose existence, even among the most rational of us, suggests that the search for transcendence may be hard-wired into human beings?
I would need some persuading that religious belief is a specific adaption; i.e. that we have evolved the tendency to believe in [...]
Darwin’s prose
28 February 2007 – 11:04 pm
I recently found Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary, being posted ‘live’ on the internet with a mere 175 year time-lag (see also Pepys, Thoreau).
He’s only just reached Brazil, so there’s plenty of time to join the fun. This is from today’s entry:
The houses are white and lofty and from the windows being narrow and long have [...]
Quito, the Galapagos and stuff
29 October 2006 – 8:27 pm
Well, I’m in Quito. Annoyingly, I can’t log into my webmail for some reason - some horrible bug in IE7 perhaps.
I spent the morning looking at pre-Hispanic stuff at the museum, which I enjoyed, and then took a token look at the glories of colonial Quito before deciding I needed to sit down for a [...]
In the Galapagos
26 October 2006 – 6:01 pm
I´ve got a couple of hours in Puerto Ayora (on Santa Cruz, in the Galapagos), so I thought I´d post a quick note.
I can recommend the Galapagos. For a start, the landscape is more varied and more beautiful than I expected; somehow in my head it was all rocks, but from island to island the [...]
Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin
15 July 2006 – 7:27 pm
Oliver Sacks fans will remember Temple Grandin as the autistic slaughterhouse designer in An Anthropologist on Mars. She has a particular affinity with animals and has used her talent for understanding them to help her design corrals, feedlots and slaughterhouses which are less stressful for the animals.
The subtitle of Animals in Translation is ‘Using the [...]
Flies, flies and more flies.
8 June 2006 – 11:59 pm
Someone posted this photo of a scorpionfly to the Flickr group ID Please:
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.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
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Schorpioenvlieg, originally uploaded by Wue.
Which reminded me of something I said a week or so ago.
I take a casual interest in insects and [...]
After 200 million years of abstinence…
3 April 2006 – 1:45 pm
An interesting story about darwinulids. As far as anyone could tell, darwinulids (a type of crustacean) had been reproducing exclusively asexually for 200,000,000 years, but now a researcher has found 3 male specimens, which implies that at least one darwinulid species has sex.
Sex is a bit mysterious in evolutionary terms because it’s so much more [...]
Atheism again
31 March 2006 – 4:27 pm
I said a few posts ago, about my own atheism, “I don’t believe in unicorns either, but I’m not about to go to any meetings about it.” Well, I haven’t been going to any atheist meetings, but I have been reading the comment threads at Pharyngula, which is a pretty good internet equivalent.
My own [...]
Transitional species
22 March 2006 – 1:40 pm
I was looking back at old PFFA threads yesterday, and there was an argument about religion, evolution and so on during which someone asserted that “there are no verifiable fossil records of transitions from one species to another.” This morning I feel inclined to make a point which I don’t think is always appreciated by [...]
Evolution, ID, Carl Zimmer, monkey-men and suchlike. Again.
27 February 2006 – 12:52 pm
I’ve just added The Loom to the linkroll. The Loom is the blog of Carl Zimmer, who wrote the excellent and rivetingly eye-opening Parasite Rex, as well as the excellent but marginally less riveting At the Water’s Edge. They’re both worth reading, but the parasite one would be my recommendation just because the subject matter [...]