History of evolution 16 Jul 2008 Ryan Gregory at Genomicron has a couple of interesting posts; One on Natural Selection before Darwin, which discusses prior presentations back to Hutton. I think he’s right that prior to Darwin selection was typically not thought of as a way to form new species. It’s generally not after Darwin either – speciation is usually thought of as a side effect of selection. Also he argues that abiogenesis, the formation of life from abiotic materials, is a part of evolution, but not required by evolutionary theory. I agree: but not because abiogenesis begins with replication. Rather, I think replication is itself the outcome of selection on chemical autocatalysis. Finally, he argues that epigenetic evolution is not Lamarckian, something else I agree with. Also note that the journal Evolution and Outreach has a new edition – free to view. Evolution History
Evolution Are species theoretical objects? 31 Aug 2007 A lot of people have said something like “species are the units of evolution”. What does this even mean? So far as I can tell, nobody has really fleshed this out. Read More
Book Wimsatt on… everything 5 Nov 200718 Sep 2017 Bill Wimsatt is one of the philosophy of biology’s underappreciated performers. Many of his takes on biology have influenced a great many people, including me. Here is an interview with him on his latest book Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality (Harvard Press, 2007). According to the… Read More