the evolving mind

Can infants receive a message about their environment — about how they should behave once up and about, to better fit it — from the milk they drink from their mother’s breast?

That would be something. And a new study of rhesus macaque monkeys suggests that it does happen. Sort of.

In a ScienceDaily article, Baby Monkeys Receive Signals Through Their Mother’s Breast Milk That Affect Behavior and Temperament, I learned . . .

Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of California, Davis are using this natural variation in breast milk quality and quantity to show that a mother’s milk sends a reliable signal to infants about their environment. This signal may program the infant’s behavior and temperament according to expectations of available resources and discourages temperaments that prove risky when food is scarce. [bold mine]

In the experiment, the researchers manipulated one variable, the richness of mothers’ milk (via their diets) to see if it would influence another variable, the subsequent temperament and behavior of the infants fed on this milk. And yes, they discovered a difference.

At 3 to 4 months old, each infant was temporarily separated from its mother and assessed according to its behavior and temperament. The study found that infants whose mothers had higher levels of milk energy soon after their birth coped more effectively (moved around more, explored more, ate and drank) and showed greater confidence (were more playful, curious and active). Infants whose mothers had lower milk energy had lower activity levels and were less confident when separated from their mother.

While this finding is very interesting, as a critical thinker I am left with questions. Here are two:

1. Can we really use words like signal and message to describe what transpires? Those words imply both a sort of information sent, vs. say, a molecular triggering, as they also imply an intellectual deciphering of the information. This, I believe, is misleading to some degree.

2. Is it possible that the quality of a mother’s milk reflects her social status as much as it does the general availability of food in the environment? Mothers at the bottom of the macaque hierarchy, and macaques are extremely hierarchically-oriented animals, may have lesser access to quality foods and greater exposure the stress and factors that could influence the quality of their milk. To me, this would make good sense of an infant’s subsequently less-risky behavior. When your mother is at the bottom of the hierarchy and/or has poor quality relationships, and your mother is your number one form of early social support, it pays not to behave in a risky manner. Walk more softly, otherwise you could get chased and bitten and perhaps exiled to social Siberia. Which isn’t good for survival. Hmm.

Nonetheless, the data generated from the study, an experiment, provided me with good food for thought. So to speak.

Technorati Links: development, evolution, primates, psychology

In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior, Christopher Boehm stated that political coalitions appear only in despotic (hierarchical) species. While there is some obvious truth to this — chimpanzees and macaques are noted for their hierarchical strivings and for the dynamic allegiances they form to aid upward social movement and to sustain reign at the top (1) — one wonders about humankind. Are we a despotic species, ruled and ruling by force? In the least, this is not always the case, especially in more recent history. And perhaps in ancient times of smaller average group size.

In this coming series of posts (in this category — what will become a chapter in my Almighty Alpha book) I will examine the line between hierarchical social organizations (power progressively concentrated in the few or one at the top) and egalitarian (power more equitably shared by all).

Boehm himself concluded that whether or not Homo sapiens is a hierarchical species is a controversial issue. (2) And there are certainly those who argue that we are not, not by nature, anyway. Eight years before Boehm’s book appeared, Margaret Power released, The Egalitarians: Human and Chimpanzee. She wrote:

“In most gathering-hunting societies the woman occupies a position of prestige equal to that of the man and is recognized as being equally important.” (3)

While I might argue with the qualifier “most,” there are other, perhaps more important, issues raised by her statement. Two immediately come to mind: 1) How do we determine whether or not a society is egalitarian? Just knowing one by seeing one? That’s not very scientific. 2) Are there perhaps many shades of gray–social groups that are neither outright egalitarian nor outright hierarchical, but some hybrid of the two?

Continue Reading »

Technorati Links: evolution, psychology

At least in part, Dawkins wrote his most recent book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, as a reaction and response to the growing influence of creationists. Those who seek to obstruct academic progress, if not reverse it, by insisting on teaching their origins mythology in science classrooms.

Besides generally educating yourself (if not an expert on evolution already) a reading of Dawkins’ book can provide a number of comebacks to Creationist claims.

1) Argument from incredulity:

Evolution is so complex and mysterious (to me), therefore there must be supernatural influence (my favorite intellectual fudge factor).

The title to Dawkins’ eighth chapter succinctly says it: “You Did It Yourself in Nine Months”

Response: So, you need a god to explain the development of species from simpler forms? What about your development from a simpler form? After all, you begin life as one cell which became a ball of cells and then something quite alien, almost fish-looking, until a small you with huge head was born. And even then your personal evolution wasn’t complete. Tell me, where in that process is it necessary to inject supernatural influence? Mind you, science can explain it all the way from A to Z. What non-superfluous element would your god add? And how might this be different than evolution at large?

2) Stuck on fossil-record gaps:

But the fossil record has gaps and . . . yada yada yada.

Response 1: Well, it is a shame that no one was around the videotape all of biological history. So instead we have to rely on the photographic “stills” provided by an imperfect fossil record. If you have difficulty seeing the connection between one “still” and another, try stapling them together in a book and commence with flipping. See it now?

Response 2: That gap-filled fossil record you refer to provides more than a linear link of related species. Our earth’s geological strata are themselves a history book of sorts. One that says the same thing from continent to continent. In fact, that history book has helped us to understand plate tectonics. One of the ways we know land-masses have migrated is the fossil record that places species adjacent to one another. But only where the puzzle pieces physically fit together. To call this pure coincidence is magical thinking of a nihilistic variety.

Response 3: We have evolutionary “History Written All Over Us” (Dawkins’ 11th chapter title). The fossil record is but one line of evidence. Our very own physiology, and that of all other species, tells a tale in its own right. We share most of our genes with chimpanzees for a reason. From bone structure to the type of proteins in our cells, all this supports rather than refutes the evolutionary perspective.

Here’s a quick list of tell-tale facts from a sampling of species: Human beings get “goosebumps,” despite the fact that there is no advantage to erecting non-existent fur. Whales have bud-like hind “legs” hidden beneath their outer form. What purpose do they serve? The dolphin’s brain has a convoluted surface to its cortex, something that shows kinship with other mammals, not fish. The giraffe’s laryngeal nerve travels down its long neck to loop around the dorsal aorta befor traveling all the way back up. In ancestral species, that loop was just a short loop. But once the pathway was set, evolution worked with what was. And so the nerve was extended twice the length as was the giraffe’s neck. Design would surely have included a short cut. There is none. Just a ridiculously long nerve that could as easily be short.

3) Nature as manifesting design:

Nature is just so marvelous and beautiful and perfectly designed, it had to be designed by a A+ force (which just happens to be my conception of a deity).

Take off your rose-colored glasses and look closer at nature. Yah, that place where disease and suffering and death are commonplace.

First there are imperfections and outright flaws. While they don’t make sense in terms of design, they do make another type of sense. Dawkins writes:

“The human body abounds with what, in one sense, we could call imperfections, but, in another sense, should be seen as inescapable compromises resulting from our long ancestral history of descent from other kinds of animals.” p. 365

Lower back problems? Difficult childbirth? Are these evidence of a flawed design or of descent from non-upright ancestors?

Urinary infections? To urinate out of the same organ you procreate with, well, that’s not a divine plan so much as it is a “patch and go” evolutionary solution to near-term pressures. No far-seeing designer would place such problem-prone elements in his product.

Etc., etc., etc.

And then there is the monumental waste evident in creation. Most species create far more offspring than survive. Fish, turtles, birds and mice all lose great numbers of their offspring to predation, disease, starvation. And so they make more and more.

In his 12th chapter Dawkins speaks of the evolutionary arms race. And a massive example of this is . . . tree trunks. Yes, tree trunks. Why are there trunks? To elevate one species’ leaves above the leaves of competitors. And sometimes that elevation is hundreds of feet, requiring a massive amount of otherwise unnecessary fiber to support it. An intelligent designer would likely make more efficient elements, rather than having plants complete with one another, and engage in expensive means of getting a limb-up.

The slow, mosh-pit evolution of green matter attempting to outdo other species of green matter for limited resources (light, etc.) is evidence of evolution, not a paradise on earth. Not if you look closely. And speaking of looking closely, examine any tree close enough and you will find hundreds of other species living not peaceable with it, lion and lamb-like, but living off of it. Bacteria, fungi, woodpeckers, etc.

And that is how evolution works. Study the facts. Study the history of life on earth. Evolution is indeed an inescapable conclusion.

Oh, and maybe you should read Dawkins’ book. I recommend it.

Technorati Links: creationism, Dawkins, evolution

Homosexuality, where not repressed out of view, occurs in all cultures across the globe. Clearly there is a genetic component to it. From a strict evolutionary perspective, this doesn’t make sense. Like grandparents, homosexuals leave very few offspring and consume resources. There is a cost to a population, so where is the evolutionary benefit?

Similar to thinking about the group-level adaptiveness of grandparents, some evolutionary psychologists have advanced a “kin selection hypothesis.”

What that means is that homosexuality may convey an indirect benefit by enhancing the survival prospects of close relatives. Specifically, the theory holds that homosexual men might enhance their own genetic prospects by being “helpers in the nest.” By acting altruistically toward nieces and nephews, homosexual men would perpetuate the family genes, including some of their own. [article source]

While this is an intriguing idea, it remains an inert idea until supported by indirect evidence, at least. Or, better yet, until put to a direct test. And news of such a test has recently been released.

Paul Vasey and Doug VanderLaan of the University of Lethbridge, Canada tested this idea for the past several years on the Pacific island of Samoa. They chose Samoa because males who prefer men as sexual partners are widely recognized and accepted there as a distinct gender category—called fa’afafine—neither man nor woman. The fa’afafine tend to be effeminate, and exclusively attracted to adult men as sexual partners. This clear demarcation makes it easier to identify a sample for study.

What were the results of the test? (I would call it a “weak” test due to the methods–questionnaires–and data generated–self-reported answers). It seems the Samoan homosexual males did indeed show helping/resource-allocation favoritism toward the offspring of their siblings. They doted on nieces and nephews.

Certainly, in this one case it could be that culture has fashioned a productive role for these men, and it has nothing to do with evolution. But we don’t know that.

This line of research, however, has left me with one important question: Must all gene combinations be adaptive? Assuming that homosexuality is at least partly genetic, it is highly unlikely that there is a single “gay” gene. Or lesbian gene.

Consider this hypothetical: homosexuality results when A, B, and C genes occur together. The combination is not strictly adaptive because homosexuals tend to leave fewer offspring, if any. But perhaps the combinations of A and B, A and C, and B and C are adaptive. Maybe even highly so. And so the genes have not been trimmed out of existence via natural selection.

Additionally, we must remember that “gay” and “lesbian” are intellectual categories. Human sexual orientation likely comes in many forms or degrees. Similar to the personality attribute of extroversion/introversion, there is not just fully “extroverted” and fully “introverted.” There are 101 degrees of this element of social orientation. I imagine the same is true for sexual orientation.

If extreme introverts don’t leave as many offspring, one could ask why introversion continues to persist? Which is silly. That’s a taking a narrow view of things. As usual, it is likely much more complicated than that.

Technorati Links: evolution, homosexuality

Where’s the crocoduck? Where’s Homo webbed-feet?

Chapter 6 (“Missing Link? What Do You Mean, ‘Missing’?”) and chapter 7 (“Missing Persons? Missing No Longer”) of Dawkins’ latest book (The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution) tackle the myth of . . . you guessed it: the flagship gap otherwise known as the SS Missing Link.

That boat don’t float. I found a few of Dawkins’ points particularly illuminating, including these two.

1) Biological transitions are never immediate (hardly never?), often occurring over many thousands of years, with innumerable, subtle “intermediate stages” between what we recognize as before and as after. Whether opponents to evolution demand to see “a monkey give birth to a human” (that actually happens every day, at least in the colloquial) or a fossil of a half-carrot, half-bird, or some seemingly more reasonable demand, they are confusing snapshots of the moving picture of evolution for endstates. And revealing an ignorance of how evolution works.

On page 203 Dawkins writes:

“Nobody seriously believes there are two kinds of people, children and adults, with ‘no intermediates’. Obviously we all understand that the whole period of growing up is one long exercise in intermediacy.”

Consider a family photograph album with a number of missing pages. Are we supposed to believe that the son from page 1 “magically” transformed into the man on page 31, the daughter on 2 to the woman on 32? (Was that a sexist numbering?) Crazy! Or maybe not.

It is as if creationists, when examining the photographic record, demand, “Where are the photos of the baby boy with a full beard? Where’s the infant girl with double-Ds and pubic hair? Where are the missing transitional forms that strike me as obviously transitional!”

This sentence from the book is a real kicker.

“The changes that take place within an individual’s lifetime, as it grows up, are in any case much more dramatic than the changes we see as we compare adults in successive generations.” p. 205

Oh, snap!

Evolution is a messy affair. The well-educated and rational don’t expect to see a clear, distinct step by distinct step progression from simpler to more complex forms. (E.g. Step one, boy without a beard, step two, boy with a moustache, step three, boy with beard and moustache.)

2. Evolution is no ladder with representational species as rungs and a designated endpoint.

Although it may feel right to project a meaning onto evolution; it is mistaken. Manifesting extreme species-centrism, many people portray life as progression up the ladder of biological forms — slime, fish, rodents, monkeys, apes, and surprise! our kind — as a sort of preordained progression.

So those ancient fish with a proclivity for crawling in the mud at water’s edge, they did their part in providing the scaffolding that led to me. Thanks fish!

If nature had a motto, it might be, “what works, works.” Sounds tautological, but it’s true. In a sense, it is only tautological when we expect a greater meaning, a purpose.

So no, evolution is not about life progressing steadily up a ladder, progressively moving toward the godly ideal: which coincidentally is human-like. Talk about tragically narrow-minded.

How’s this for a startling and humbling evolutionary fact:

“A horse’s foot is simpler than a human foot (it has only a single digit instead of five, for example), but the human foot is more primitive (the ancestor that we share with horses had five digits, as we do, so the horse has changed more.” p. 157

Similarly, within a genus of species, forms have evolved with eyes only to later lose them to one degree or another (such as in the case of cave-dwelling fish and reptiles). What kind of ladder is that?

I came away from this section of Dawkins’ book with the insight that the idea of a missing link is a substantially bogus concept. First, because change is gradual and of degree, and second due to the expectation of inevitable advance.

I’ll end with a quote I particularly enjoyed.

“Think about the first specimen of Homo habilis to be born. Her parents were Australopithicus. She belonged to a different genus from her parents? That’s just dopey! Yes it certainly is. But it is not reality that’s at fault, it’s our human insistence on shoving everything into a named category.” p. 195

Words. Though they are fantastic tools, they do have limits.

Technorati Links: creationism, evolution, ID

If you can measure something, I would say it’s real. Well, at least if others are capable of measuring it, too, and your definition of what it is you are actually measuring is concrete vs. vague.

With each passing month, with each passing dozens of studies, it becomes progressively more ludicrous for creationists to deny the reality of evolution. Consider these two recent pieces of research.

1) Evolution Caught in the Act: Scientists Measure How Quickly Genomes Change

[Researchers] followed all genetic changes in five lines of the mustard relative Arabidopsis thaliana that occurred during 30 generations. In the genome of the final generation they then searched for differences to the genome of the original ancestor.

The painstakingly detailed comparison of the entire genome revealed that in over the course of only a few years some 20 DNA building blocks, so called base pairs, had been mutated in each of the five lines.

Ah, yes, the slow, sure march of mutation-led evolution. Measured and documented.

Of course, the “march” doesn’t lead to some anthropocentrically-meaningful endpoint. Just to a better fit with changing environments.

2. Researchers Track Evolution and Spread of Drug-Resistant Bacteria Across Hospitals and Continents

Warning! Hard-core science ahead.

Colleagues at ITQB in Portugal and Susana Gardete, a postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Microbiology and Infectious Disease at Rockefeller, prepared DNA from more than 40 of the Brazilian MRSA isolates recovered between 1982 and 2003 from a variety of sources in Europe, South America and Asia. These preparations were analyzed by colleagues at the Sanger Institute using a new, very high throughput DNA sequencing technology.

The findings reported in Science provide an unparalleled view of the evolutionary history and age of the Brazilian MRSA clone. It was possible to show that the most likely birthplace of Brazilian MRSA was actually Europe, from where it spread to South America and Asia. From there, it continued to evolve and was reintroduced to Europe at a later date.

Yah, sure. The above sounds like crazy scientists deluding themselves with their evolution dogma, doesn’t it. (Not!) Boy, they sure go to great lengths to pull the wool over their eyes and the eyes of the public. Evolution, shmevolution. What’s even more amazing is that thousands of researchers with different political leanings, religious beliefs (or none) and general philosophies of life can work in relative unison to perpetuate the hoax.

Back to reality now. The truth? The “science” of Creationism isn’t so much science as it is a means for believers to keep their heads buried in the ancient sands of a mythology.

Technorati Links: creationism, evolution

Whoa! In a previous post about Dawkins’ book, didn’t I criticize the use of “fact” to describe the Theory of Evolution? Yes I did. How then, in the title to this post, can I refer to the facts of evolution without contradiction?

Allow me to explain. The philosophical wordsmith in me believes that a theory cannot be a fact. While a theory can be be true, or valid, or empirically substantiated beyond the shadow of a doubt (as in the case of the Theory of Evolution), theories belong in different categories than facts.

So no, I don’t believe it is contradictory to refrain from referring to evolution-theory as a fact, but freely refer to the empirical measurements and observations that evolution has occurred as facts.

Dawkins himself illustrates the difference by using this metaphor throughout his book: a detective objectively examining the evidence for evolution will surely come to the conclusion that evolution is a fact.

What are detected? Facts. What is the result? A conclusion. However, I do stop short of calling a conclusion a fact. Yet there are undeniable facts supporting the conclusion. If Evolutionary Theory itself were the case of a simple fact, would you need a detective to detect it?

One of the things Dawkins’ book does extremely well is to share some of the most substantial facts that reveal evolution to us. Bits of evidence that lead to one conclusion. Evolution is true.

In Chapter 5, “Before Our Very Eyes,” of his most recent book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Dawkins presents evidence of evolution in our time. And the cases of bacterial evolution and guppy evolution are very compelling.

Evolution on a Petri Dish

Richard Lenski & co. followed not 2 nor 20, but a mind-boggling 45,000 generations of bacteria in their lab. As a selective pressure — a “fitness hurdle” that the evolution of the bacteria surmounted — they manipulated the food supply, the amount of glucose in the environment. This was a controlled experiment. A test. And evolution passed the test. Undeniably so. Read the account in his book. You’ll be impressed.

Evolution in a Stream and Lab

In another bit of slam-dunk research Dawkins shares, an experiment produced measurable phenotypical change in populations of guppies. In as little 9 months! The presence of predatory fish provided the fitness hurdle subsequent generations of offspring were “selected for” (a problematic term, for no external agent did any selecting).

What about the fish changed? The average number of male decorative spots, the overall size of the fish, and the number of offspring. In both the predator-free and predator-limited environments, the fish grew larger and had fewer offspring of larger size. This is a distinctly different reproductive strategy, at least on the spectrum of “fewer with greater chances of survival vs. or more with lesser.” Additionally, it seems sexual selection favored spots in the males. But only in the predator-free and predator-limited stream environments. This is a great example why we speak of selective pressures. Just as sexual selection is not an all-or-nothing proposition, neither is the selective pressure applied by the presence of predators. Every generation lives and dies within an environmental context replete with pressures, plural. Which are the most important? Wait a generation and the answer may change.

Very significantly, the guppy study has been replicated in a controlled lab environment. Experimenters manipulated a variable, the presence of predators, to see if it would cause change in another — the phenotype of the small fish. It did.

The Conclusion

There is only one sensible way to describe what happened to those many generations of bacteria and guppies: They evolved. It is an inescapable conclusion. No denying it.

Evolutionary theory passed those two tests described above. As it has many others. You reasonably say say that controlled experiment has confirmed the validity, the truth, of Evolutionary Theory.

What test has any other theory about the origins and development of life on Earth passed? None. And that speaks volumes.

Technorati Links: evolution, Richard Dawkins

Is high fashion evidence of big smarts? An article posted at ScienceDaily last month got me thinking about it: Use of Body Ornamentation Shows Neanderthal Mind Capable of Advanced Thought.

While I find the data in the research compelling, I’m not so sure about the inferences drawn.

The data:

Professor João Zilhão and colleagues examined pigment-stained and perforated marine shells, most certainly used as neck pendants, from two Neanderthal-associated sites in the Murcia province of south-east Spain (Cueva de los Aviones and Cueva Antón).

Couple that neck pendant with a pair of earrings and some perfume, and that Neanderthal is ready for a night on the town! (Or maybe the valley.) Assuming, of course, that the pendants were worn by females. Which is an assumption that could very well be false. Maybe the ornamentation was of the unisex variety. Or for the cavemen only.

Inference 1:

he practice of body ornamentation is widely accepted by archaeologists as conclusive evidence for modern behaviour and symbolic thinking among early modern humans but has not been recognised in Neanderthals — until now.

“Conclusive evidence” for symbolic thinking? I wonder. Is the . . . intuition (what’s in a word? a lot) “this looks attractive” evidence of symbolic thinking? If the pendants were traded as currency, I could more confidently accept the symbolic-thought conclusion.

Inference 2:

The widespread view of Neanderthals as cognitively inferior to early modern humans is challenged by new research . . . . Professor Zilhão said: “This is the first secure evidence that, some 50,000 years ago — ten millennia before modern humans are first recorded in Europe — the behaviour of Neanderthals was symbolically organised.”

Symbolically organized? Many birds decorate their nests with pretty bits of debris “intentionally” collected for the purpose. Even colorful scraps of human trash. Does this show a rudimentary form of a symbolic organization to their behavior as well? What about the bowerbird and its behavior?

Bird-brained fashion:

The most notable characteristic of bowerbirds is their extraordinarily complex courtship and mating behaviour, where males build a bower to attract mates. There are two main types of bowers. One clade of bowerbirds build so-called maypole bowers that are constructed by placing sticks around a sapling, in some species these bowers have a hut-like roof. The other major bowerbuilding clade builds an avenue type bower made of two walls of vertically placed sticks. In and around the bower the male places a variety of brightly colored objects he has collected. These objects — usually different among each species — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass. The males spend hours arranging this collection [source].

From the bowerbirds behavior, would we likewise infer that it was capable of advanced thought, of having a symbolic organization to its behavior? Okay, there may be a fundamental difference between the creation of a decorated bower and that of fashioning a pendant, but I would make that distinction with caution. It seems all too easy for we humans to over-estimate the meaning of our own behavior, while under-estimating that of other species.

Technorati Links: birds, evolution, fashion

In a sense, without evolution there would be no agricultural industry, no livestock farming. Many if not most of the original, “natural” forms of our animal and vegetable food sources are paltry versions of what exist today. What changed them? Call it guided evolution.

In his book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, Richard Dawkins devotes two chapters to how, for centuries, human beings have been agents of selection (“Dogs, Cows and Cabbages” and “The Primrose Path to Macro-Evolution”). He writes,

“Darwin’s special genius realized that nature could play the role of selecting agent.”

Dawkins sagely recognizes, however, that the line we draw between “natural selection” and human (unnatural) selection is spurious. Whether selection is intentional (i.e., breeders selecting rock doves–pigeons–for coloration) or unintentional (birds with stronger bills better surviving in times of drought…see The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time) — to the organism in question it really doesn’t matter.

If we bother to look around us, we would see that evolution is happening all the time. Okay, maybe not in terms of obvious morphological changes. But in terms of the ebb and flow of gene prevalence in a given population. Yes, ebb and flow. Only with a misunderstanding of evolution can one extract “progress” from it. Many important genetic changes could be described as “one step forward, the same step back.” A good example is human immunity. Our immune systems are constantly changing. Some might say “to stay one step ahead of viruses and parasites.” I would say to be able to side-step the forms we are likely to encounter in our current environment. And that’s what counts. That’s all that counts. In terms of natural selection.

Because the small steps of evolution occur at the genetic level, they seem invisible. That many species continue to change but ultimately “stand still”–according to our perspective–means that evolution can be tough to detect in real time. And, as Dawkins points out, variation among the offspring of specific members of a population is greater than the variation among generations of that population. It’s the nature of the evolution beast. So to speak.

Back to intentional selection. Dawkins’ recent book brought me a a true insight. Because he puts it so well, I’ll quote him verbatim.

“Artificial selection is not just an analogy for natural selection. Artificial selection constitutes a true experimental – as opposed to observational – test of the hypothesis that selection causes evolutionary change.”

I can see that. Thanks Richard.

Technorati Links: book review, evolution

I hope books never go the way of the Dodo. And by “books” I mean the paper-and-ink variety.

Okay, maybe I’m being like the sentimentalist from a century ago. “I’ve had such memorable, pleasant experiences with the horse-and-buggy mode of transportation that I sincerely hope it isn’t completely replaced by that foreign automobile thing.”

In terms of cultural evolution, is the book all that different from the horse-and-buggy? I don’t know if it is.

Admittedly, I’ve yet to hold a Kindle in my hands. It doesn’t have an internal combustion engine, but still. The experience of reading . . . a book . . . with it will be quite different, I imagine.

Speaking of pulp-flesh and ink-blood books, Dawkins’ recent rather hefty one, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, has a rather pleasant poetic vein running through it. Dawkins can craft a hell-of-a sentence. His prose is both erudite and supple. Consider these snippets from the book (gathered via a very quick flip-through):

“What delayed humanity’s tumbling to that luminously simple idea . . . ” (p. 21)

“For the mind encased in Platonic blinkers, a rabbit is a rabbit is a rabbit.” p. 23

“Presumably genes for floppy ears and piebald coats are pleotropically linked to genes for tameness, in foxes as well as in dogs.” p. 76

“The human body abounds with what, in one sense, we could call imperfections but, in another sense, should be seen as inescapable compromises resulting from our long ancestral history of descent from other kinds of animals.” p.365

I don’t know if Dawkins’ latest book is destined to will become a classic, but it does merit wide readership. The many pages of full-color illustrations are reason enough to consider adding the book to your library.

Library . . . is that another Dodo?

Technorati Links: books, evolution