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
Cognition 50 words for snow 3: what are phenomena? 27 Sep 20171 Mar 2019 Series Conceptual confusion The economics of cultural categories What are phenomena? What counts as sociocultural? Species Constructing phenomena Explanations and phenomena If experienced observers are trained to observe natural phenomena in their environment, pace the “interference” of cultural accidents, what is it they observe? As I mentioned before, we are not… Read More
Epistemology Scientists and history 12 Jul 2013 Recently, historian of medicine Edward Shorter made the following comment [follow link for a good discussion]: Historians aren’t as interested [in his work] because they aren’t intellectually equipped to study that kind of thing. Most of them don’t have a scientific background. They can’t get into detailed discussions of therapies because… Read More
Evolution Notre Dame conference – the washup 3 Nov 2009 It’s been a great conference. Simon Conway Morris was fun (but wrong! It’s OK, he says I am too). Peter Bowler’s talk on “what-if history” – what if Darwin had drowned on the Beagle? was actually interesting and raised some nice points about both the nature of the theory of… 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.