Evolution quotes 9 Jun 2010 For although there seems to be so great a difference between widely separate nations, that you might easily take the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope, the Greenlanders, and the Circassians for so many different species of man, yet when the matter is thoroughly considered, you see that all do so run into one another, and that one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them. [Johann Blumenbach, On The Natural Variety of Mankind, in Anthropological Treatises, 1865 English edition, first published in 1775, p98] Evolution History Quotes EvolutionHistoryQuotes
Evolution Congrats, and stuff 23 May 2008 One of my two favourite ethicists has just got tenure. Now she can say what she really thinks. [I don’t know who started the canard that ethicists are unethical. The two I know are very ethical indeed. Probably a decision theorist.] Language Log gives voice to the oft-repeated but (so… Read More
Biology Evopsychopathy 5: Conclusion 2 Jan 20133 Jan 2013 The criticisms of evolutionary psychology and its predecessors sociobiologies 1 through 3 focus on three major points: 1. It is adaptively-biased; 2. It is gene-centric (or biological determinist, which amounts to the same thing); 3. It is culturally biased in favour of the privileged classes of the people making the… Read More
Epistemology Two new papers of mine 18 Aug 2009 Deflating genetic information – in which I argue that the only sense in which genes have “information” is the causal sense of specificity Darwin on species and heredity – in which I reprise some blog entries on this site about myths of Darwin. Both are under review, and hence neither… Read More