An essay on the evolution of human evolution 12 Aug 2007 Laelaps has a very nice essay that ranges from the number of ribs humans have, the book of Genesis, creationism, and the variety of stories told about human evolution from the nineteenth century to now. Go read it. It’s one of the few blog posts in which you’ll read of petrified testicles… [HT: Afarensis] Evolution History Social evolution Species and systematics
History Gosse is online 9 Dec 2007 For those who wish a copy of Gosse’s famous Omphalos, I have uploaded it to Internet Archive. It’s still only a PDF, but I hope that the IA folks will do an OCR. Many thanks to Noelie Alito for buying me the copy. Now that it’s scanned, I’ll have it… Read More
Administrative Ooh, cool! 23 Apr 2009 “Few topics have engaged biologists and philosophers more than the concept of species, and arguably no idea is more important for evolutionary science. John S. Wilkins’ book combines meticulous historical and philosophical analysis and thus provides new insights on the development of this most enduring of subjects.”—Joel Cracraft, American Museum… Read More
General Science Lucretius and the papal secretary 25 Feb 201927 Feb 2019 In 1417, during the Council of Constance that reunited the Catholic Church in the west, a papal secretary took advantage of the location in Germany to visit some libraries, while the papacy was vacant. He was hunting manuscripts, but not the newly written ones. Instead Gian Francesco Poggio was seeking… Read More
Thank you for the link, John! I initially intended to only review a few papers, but I got sucked in (my wife knew that I would be lost to blogging for most of the day). I’ve still got to add a few illustrations later today, but I am glad you enjoyed it. Thank you.
It’s one of the few blog posts in which you’ll read of petrified testicles… Haven’t been reading my wife’s blog, eh? Brian’s blog looks very interesting Thanks for the pointer.
Just breezing through the article, the one thing that struck me is how much the Neandertal rendering from Colbert’s Evolution of the Verterbrates looks like Benjamin Disraeli.