This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. The creationist site that I briefly reviewed yesterday repeated the claim that the fossil record does not support descent with modification, and […]
-or- “(One of many reasons) Why genomics matters” This is an archival repost which was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. In chapter 14 of The Origin Darwin discussed embryological stages and their utility in classification. This utility derives from the fact […]
I recently posted on the phenomenon of British creationism, and my belief that it is not nearly as widespread and organised as the creationists would like us to believe. So it was fun this evening to come across a genuine British creationist blogger, while researching, of all things, the pub […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. Chapter ten is supposed to be a response to the objection that if evolution were true, one ought surely to be able […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. In chapter nine, Darwin takes a long look at hybrids. And I mean a long look: he can really go off on […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. In chapter eight, Darwin looks at instincts. Instincts are subject to the same processes of variation and heredity as everything else in […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. In chapter seven, Darwin responds to some more objections to his theory of natural selection. One such objection is that “many characters […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. Chapter six is where Darwin humbly acknowledges that his work is not entirely watertight, explains some of the problems that have been […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. What’s all this backlash nonsense about? We’re getting essays telling us to forget about Darwin (ironic coming from Steve Jones, who has […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. It has been noted enough times now that Darwin knew nothing of genetics, and I already described Darwin’s bizarre Lamarckian hypothesis for […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. I’ve not been up to writing anything new and insightful today. I’ve not been feeling so good or thinking so efficiently, after […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. Chapter four is supposed to be the big reveal of natural selection, the solution to one of nature’s greatest problem. Trouble is, […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. In addition to The Origin, over the past few months I have been slowly working through an anthology of Darwin’s letters, which […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. Chapter 3 is the struggle for existence. If The Origin had been written a hundred and twenty years later than it was, […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. Chapter 2 is “variation in nature”. You can’t solve a problem without first defining terms, so if the problem is the origin […]
This post is part of a series on The Origin Of Species. It was originally posted on the old blog in feb 2009, during the Darwin 200 celebrations. In Chapter one of the Origin, Darwin discusses inheritance and variation. It’s an interesting choice for a starting point, because as everyone […]
This is an archival repost from the old blog. Like many science bloggers, it is my intention to blog about evolution and/or Darwin every day this month. One thing that I will be blogging is The Origin Of Species. It will hard work: fifteen chapters of Victorian prose to get […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog, originally from january 2009. I’ve heard it said several times. Usually it’s when I scold an acquaintance for being in possession of a copy. They will say something like, “I only bought it because it’s a convenient size,” or, “I just […]
Michael Retsky, William Hrushesky, and Isaac Gukas have an interesting article relating to angiogenesis in the evolution of tumours published in BMC Cancer today.[1] It’s only an hypothesis, but it covers an area of cancer biology that I have been meaning to blog about for a long time now. Angiogenesis […]
This is another archival repost originally written for the old blog in 2008. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence – as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason […]
This is an archival repost originally written on the old blog in 2008. Hah! Made you look! No, but seriously… The schizophrenic argument of the creationists goes something like this (my paraphrasing): How can we believe anything these scientists say when they keep changing what they say to accommodate the […]
This is another archival repost, originally written for the old blog in May 2008. Darwin’s 1837 phylogeny, with root and branches. I’ve talked about Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) on the blog a few times before, particularly in the context of bacteria acquiring genes for things like antibiotic resistance, and in […]
This is an archive from the old blog, originally written in 2008. Regular readers may have noticed that I get rather annoyed by the casual use of the word “chemical” to mean “synthetic chemical”, and the use of the naturalistic fallacy (natural good, chemical bad) that is associated with this […]
This is another archival repost from the old blog — this one from january 2008. This post is part six in a series. The series so far can be found here. Cogito, ergo sum. René Descartes, 1637. I’ve given five posts and several thousand words over to introductions to principles […]
I’ve been reading John Gribbin’s In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat. He casually mentions the atomic (or, rather, ‘atomistic’) theories of the ancients — in particular Democritus. Gribbin accuses historians of science and popular writers of attributing too much to Democritus, whose ideas about the world do not resemble modern physics. […]