Quorum sensing in bacteria and cooperation 26 Aug 2009 Byte Size Biology has a post up discussing a recent paper on quorum sensing in bacteria, a process whereby the chemical signals for a community of microbial organisms can modify the dynamics of the organisms themselves. It’s interesting in its own right, but also to show how cooperation can evolve in a realworld case. Biology Evolution
Biology On Hauser 20 Jul 201120 Jul 2011 Marc Hauser, the primatologist psychologist at Harvard who recently was accused of mistreating evidence and graduate students, has resigned. I am in two minds about this. His work, although I am unconvinced by some of it, was very important, and he was good at communicating to the lay reader (including… Read More
Epistemology Darwinian evolution for culture 15 Nov 2009 Following on from my piece about songs and scientists, underverse (Chris Schoen) has taken me to task: … it becomes easy to see one of the flaws in memetic thinking. Changes in “culture” differ from changes in biology in that they are not random; they are directed toward a specific… Read More
Accommodationism Accommodating Science overview 13 Mar 2014 I have done quite a lot of blogging under this heading lately so I thought it might be useful to get all the posts used in order: On beliefs Why do believers believe silly things? The function of denialism Why do believers believe THOSE silly things? The “developmental hypothesis” of… Read More