A melange 14 Jan 2009 Chris Nedin at Ediacaran has a nice discussion of the metaphor of the adaptive landscape, “Climbing Pit Improbable“. It should be noted that the genetic notion of adaptive peaks is exactly the same thing as the AI notion of gradient descent learning., which inverts the “landscape” the way Chris describes. The philosopher responsible for initiating the “deep ecology” movement, Arne Naess, has died at the age of 96. Maybe there is something to this exercise thing. John Whitfield, at Blogging the Origin, is, well, blogging his way through the Origin. Chapter 1 is here. Comments by various folk make it more interesting (OK, I’m commenting there, alright?) Thomas Levenson at The Inverse Square Blog (what a name! I wish I’d thought of that one!) has a birthday greeting for Wallace. I’m a little late on that one, but I was travelling. Chief atheist puppygrinder, Brent Rasmussen, takes spiritualists to task for redefining “God” to mean anything at all. I disagree with him – when science and religion conflict, then religion had better redefine God to mean something that is still possible. I think it’s a (limited) virtue of religion that it can adapt. On another religious criticism, Ebach and Williams attack taxonomists who don’t get that paraphyly is artificial and anti-evolutionary. And finally on religion, here’s an article about Dulles (the cardinal, not the politician) arguing that we need religion to explain teleology in biology. Did nobody noticve that this has been eliminated already? Ecology and Biodiversity Evolution General Science Religion Species and systematics trashcan categorial
Evolution Alien life in Phoenix 10 Jun 2009 I find Paul Davies, the physicist who gets quoted on everything, really annoying sometimes. This is one of those times. Davies appropriates another’s ideas (Carol Cleland’s), arguing that we should look for a “second kind of life” on earth. Then he appropriates yet another’s work (Philippa Uwin’s work on nanobes),… Read More
Biology The difference between population concepts and “population thinking” 8 Jan 201224 Nov 2022 The late Ernst Mayr is remembered for many things, but a number of his historical and philosophical claims are unravelling. The very clever and perspicacious Rutgers geneticist, Jody Hey, has published a paper in the Quarterly Review of Biology on one of these. Jody is a very good reader of… Read More
Evolution New work on speciation 5 Aug 2008 Just lately there’s been a flurry of papers on speciation that I haven’t had time to digest properly. Several of them seem to support “sympatric” or localised speciation based on selection for local resources with reproductive isolation a side effect of divergent selection. So here they are below the fold… Read More
“…religion to explain teleology…” !! Hmmm. Maybe we should restitute the Phlogiston theory of heat, (and the Frigoric theory of cold), the Theory of Spontaneous Generation, and (of course) the flat earth. I’m sure that there are plenty of other bad concepts out there to mock.
“…religion to explain teleology…” !! Hmmm. Maybe we should restitute the Phlogiston theory of heat, (and the Frigoric theory of cold), the Theory of Spontaneous Generation, and (of course) the flat earth. I’m sure that there are plenty of other bad concepts out there to mock.
“…religion to explain teleology…” !! Hmmm. Maybe we should restitute the Phlogiston theory of heat, (and the Frigoric theory of cold), the Theory of Spontaneous Generation, and (of course) the flat earth. I’m sure that there are plenty of other bad concepts out there to mock.
“…religion to explain teleology…” !! Hmmm. Maybe we should restitute the Phlogiston theory of heat, (and the Frigoric theory of cold), the Theory of Spontaneous Generation, and (of course) the flat earth. I’m sure that there are plenty of other bad concepts out there to mock.
arguing that we need religion to explain teleology in biology. Or vice versa. See Conway Morris, passim.
arguing that we need religion to explain teleology in biology. Or vice versa. See Conway Morris, passim.
arguing that we need religion to explain teleology in biology. Or vice versa. See Conway Morris, passim.
arguing that we need religion to explain teleology in biology. Or vice versa. See Conway Morris, passim.
>>Maybe there is something to this exercise thing. I wouldnt’t got that far. If you go hiking in Australia I think your life expectacy is lowered. I read somewhere that life expetancy goes up 3 years for every 10 iq points above the norm. So given my data for nowegian male life expectancy from a report by the UN) only goes back to born in 1950 (69.3) he must have had an IQ around 200… Now if only i could find his IQ, if it were ever measured… Yay gross misuse of statistics!
>>Maybe there is something to this exercise thing. I wouldnt’t got that far. If you go hiking in Australia I think your life expectacy is lowered. I read somewhere that life expetancy goes up 3 years for every 10 iq points above the norm. So given my data for nowegian male life expectancy from a report by the UN) only goes back to born in 1950 (69.3) he must have had an IQ around 200… Now if only i could find his IQ, if it were ever measured… Yay gross misuse of statistics!
>>Maybe there is something to this exercise thing. I wouldnt’t got that far. If you go hiking in Australia I think your life expectacy is lowered. I read somewhere that life expetancy goes up 3 years for every 10 iq points above the norm. So given my data for nowegian male life expectancy from a report by the UN) only goes back to born in 1950 (69.3) he must have had an IQ around 200… Now if only i could find his IQ, if it were ever measured… Yay gross misuse of statistics!
In the matter of Dulles, how can anyone who attributes “aspirations” to plants be taken seriously at all? The reasoning becomes even more muddled from there, if that’s possible. The article did provide me with one surprise, though: the stupid, pejorative term “Darwinism” has been around longer than I thought!
In the matter of Dulles, how can anyone who attributes “aspirations” to plants be taken seriously at all? The reasoning becomes even more muddled from there, if that’s possible. The article did provide me with one surprise, though: the stupid, pejorative term “Darwinism” has been around longer than I thought!
Cardinal Dulles is just being a good Aristotelian Thomist as the Catholic Church demands. What do you expect? After all they pay for his upkeep and all those fancy dress costumes that he gets to wear.
Cardinal Dulles is just being a good Aristotelian Thomist as the Catholic Church demands. What do you expect? After all they pay for his upkeep and all those fancy dress costumes that he gets to wear.
Cardinal Dulles is just being a good Aristotelian Thomist as the Catholic Church demands. What do you expect? After all they pay for his upkeep and all those fancy dress costumes that he gets to wear.
Paraphyletic taxa are quite valuable. They are an irrefutable argument for more funding for taxonomists.
Paraphyletic taxa are quite valuable. They are an irrefutable argument for more funding for taxonomists.
the stupid, pejorative term “Darwinism” has been around longer than I thought! From the beginning, actually, being coined by Huxley in 1860. Of course, originally, it wasn’t quite so pejorative.