Darwin, Romanes and Bateson on speciation 1 May 2010 The ever-productive Donald Forsdyke, who I quoted in the previous post, has a new paper up on the origins of reproductive isolation, and theories of speciation. Proving that no good idea is ever entirely novel, it turns out some of my ideas in this paper are prefigured here. At least, I think they are good ideas… Evolution History Species and systematics EvolutionHistory
History Apologies to Turing 5 Sep 20094 Oct 2017 The Twentieth Century was a century of geniuses, but the greatest of all, in my opinion, was Alan Turing. Turing invented, both the logic and the first hardware, the computer you are now using to read this post. More than any other invention, Turing’s changed our world; more than Gutenberg,… Read More
Evolution The origins of agriculture now extended 28 Sep 200818 Sep 2017 Readers know I think religion is post-agricultural, which raises some difficulties if we find evidence of organised religious behaviours before the onset of agriculture. The case in point here being Göbeli Tepe. Now a recent model of the process of cereal domestication has set back the beginnings of agriculture some… Read More
Metaphysics On hierarchies 29 Jun 200922 Jun 2018 We often make an appeal to hierarchical relations, in social and political discourse, in religion, in metaphysics (or that odd part of it called mereology) and more recently in social behaviour in animals, called ethology. But what we don’t do much is discuss what it is that a hierarchy is,… Read More