Category Archives: Species and systematics
Rise of the Planet of the Moralists 1: Introduction
Rise of the Planet of the Moralists Series1: Introduction2: Chains and Trees 3: Clades and grades4: Predicting traits5: Social dominance and power This is an extended meditation upon the recent film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). There may be spoilers (first and … Continue reading
Passing thoughts and miscellany
First of all it occurs to me that people who expect the Singularity to occur simply do not get the logistic growth curve. I’ll just throw that out there. Second, the Great Migration Back to the Homeland (i.e., my move … Continue reading
Filed under Administrative, Evolution, Humor, Species and systematics
Competition: copy of my species book
My book Species: A History of the Idea is soon to be available in paperback. I have a few copies I’d like to share, so put your name in the comments and make sure your email is filled out (it … Continue reading
Filed under Administrative, History, Humor, Species and systematics
Ecological speciation
A new paper in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology (link below) assesses the possibility of speciation by ecological differentiation in conjunction with geographical isolation. The interesting thing here is that it takes two views previously considered as antagonists and combines … Continue reading
Huxley on species
I bought a fine copy of the Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley in 3 volumes. On page 343f of volume I I find his thoughts on speciation, addressed to the Rev. Charles Kingsley (author of the Water Babies) … Continue reading
Filed under Evolution, History, Natural Classification, Species concept
The taxonomy of disease
A letter in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery has argued that it is time to reform the taxonomy of disease. The authors are Ismail Kola, head of a pharmaceutics company, and Sir John Bell, Regius Professor at Oxford. The taxonomy of … Continue reading
Filed under Biology, General Science, Natural Classification, Systematics
Counting species
Suppose a scholar of toys wanted to count the number of kinds of toys in the world. Since this information is not generally recorded, the scholar might look at the ways toys are used, the sales figures, or the designs … Continue reading
