Category Archives: Genetics
Linkeries
Piece on the arbitrariness of “statistical significance” and the effect it has in medical research. Not terribly good argument that brain science doesn’t disprove God (or Darwin, I hope, but the headline is clearer than the essay). Even some conservatives … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, Genetics, History, Philosophy, Science
Thermodynamics, and the origin of replicators
Over at Discover, Sean Carroll has a nice post on thermodynamics, free energy and the origins of life. It’s a good intro, but in the course of it he remarks: Obviously there is a lot missing to this story, and … Continue reading
Filed under Biology, Evolution, Genetics, Philosophy, Science
mtDNA varies in a single individual
It turns out, according to a recent study, that mitochondrial genomes vary within a single normal individual (human, but we should be able to generalise). What, I wonder, does this mean for the use of DNA barcoding?
Filed under Biology, Genetics, Species and systematics, Species concept, Systematics
Darwin was not badly received by the church
Robert J. Berry is a geneticist at University College London. He is also an evangelical Christian and has written a number of works on the compatibility of religion (his kind, anyway) and evolution. He has a quite accurate letter in … Continue reading
Hunting for the Hat Gene
Mark Liberman has a good essay on why we shouldn’t be seeking genes for X here.
Darwinian evolution for culture
Following on from my piece about songs and scientists, underverse (Chris Schoen) has taken me to task: … it becomes easy to see one of the flaws in memetic thinking. Changes in “culture” differ from changes in biology in that … Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, Evolution, General Science, Genetics, Philosophy, Science, Social evolution
An old question: genes and responsibility
Here’s a judge doing what generations of philosophers and theologians haven’t been able to do: determine when determination is determinative: In the report, [scientists] Pietrini and Sartori concluded that Bayout’s genes would make him more prone to behaving violently if … Continue reading
Filed under Genetics, Philosophy, Politics, Social dominance
Darwin and Blumenbach
I recently became aware that the probable originator of the “biological” species concept, which I prefer to call the Reproductive Isolation Species Conception*, or RISC, was Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840). He presented this in his doctoral thesis On the natural … Continue reading
Filed under Biology, Evolution, Genetics, History, Natural Classification, Philosophy, Science, Species concept
