Yet another Darwin diagnosis 18 Jan 2010 Diagnosing Darwin’s maladies is something of a professional sport amongst doctors. Previously he has been diagnosed as having Chagas Disease, chronic fatigue, various viruses, and now something called cyclical vomiting syndrome. Since this “diagnosis” sounds like a simple description of the symptoms, colour me unimpressed. Evolution History
Evolution William Smellie on the great chain of being 2 Mar 2009 William Smellie wrote The Philosophy of Natural History in 1791, and it remained in print for over a century. It’s a lovely and explicit expression of the Great Chain of Being view that all things grade insensibly from simple to perfect, and all classifications are arbitrary. This was effectively the… Read More
Biology Downward Causation 9 Aug 201122 Jun 2018 The final claim for there being an ontological sense to emergence is “downward causation“, a phrase coined by the evolutionary epistemologist Donald Campbell in the 1970s. The idea here is that emergence is real because higher-level (or bigger, composite) entities cause changes in the properties and dynamics of their parts…. Read More
Whenever I see the word “syndrome” this comes to my mind http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1762 and I loose all seriousness. []’s Leo