Weekly book club for two plays with evolutionary themes: The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard and The How and the Why by Sarah Treem.
What is the role of evolutionary theory in explaining aesthetics in nature and in human culture? How might we explain our own aesthetic experiences?
Filmic tragedies about climate change would be a better genre than melodrama to help promote perspective and purpose for the ethical and political difficulties ahead.
Discovery has made a genome-sequencing error into Star Trek canon. But it's hardly out of line with what came before. As much as it pains this Trekkie biologist to admit, the franchise has long had a fairly shaky grasp on the details of genetics and biological evolution.
Bringing together cutting-edge scientists and scholars across this range, Darwin's Bridge gives an expert account of consilience and makes it possible to see how far we have come toward unifying knowledge about the human species, what major issues are still in contention, and which areas of research are likely to produce further progress.
Two controversies lurk beneath an impressive display of interdisciplinarityRecently, we at <em>Evolution: This View of Life</em> had the pleasure of attending and covering the first annual conference on “Consilience”—or the unity of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. The conference, of which we at ETVOL hope to see many future iterations, was organized and hosted by Joseph Carroll of the University of Missouri in St. Louis.
“We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”There are many criticisms of the evolutionary view of human nature, and most of these have been the subject of ongoing debate and commentary. In this series of posts, of which this is the first installment, I will address one of the most pervasive objections, particularly among secular humanists and even some scientists: the notion that we’re telling “just-so stories” about human nature.