Some hominid evolution items 19 Aug 2009 Two items worth reading: Mailund notes that the 2006 claim of complex speciation, involving gene exchange for some time after the chimp and hominid lineages split, has been argued against on the grounds that high rates of sperm production in humans and chimps could generate the effect. Pleiotropy discusses the Hobbit’s phylogeny, noting that the cladistics won’t determine whether it was a distinct species, because just putting the specimens into the data matrix presumes that they are: The fishy part is that in order to construct cladograms like the ones above, the authors assumed that H. floresiensis and H. sapiens are different species. Once that is done, no other conclusion can be reached. Evolution Species and systematics Species concept Systematics
Book Books 25 Aug 2008 In addition to Fuller’s Science versus Religion, I also received my copy of Phil Dowe’s Galileo, Darwin and Hawking last week, and today arrives Roy Davies’ The Darwin Conspiracy (thanks, Roy; I will be as even handed as I can be), and Frank Schaeffer’s Crazy for God. So I am… Read More
Evolution Going backwards, or, devolution? 29 Sep 2009 Carl Zimmer has another one of his excellent summary articles, this time about the problems encountered by a research group that tried to make a protein that had evolved into one form, evolve back to the starting point. This is being touted as a molecular version of “Dollo’s Law” (which is… Read More
Cognition 50 words for snow 2: or, the economics of cultural categories 24 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 Humans evolved in a world where knowing whether an animal was an antelope or a lion was essential for their survival: they could eat the antelope, and they could… Read More