Topic
evolution
- Harari vs. Henrich
An interesting piece from Joseph Heath that compares the opposed theories on the origins of human intelligence posited by Yuval Noah Harari and Joseph Henrich: What makes the field of human evolutionary theory so inte…
- Natures Barbell Strategy
Evolution has generated two opposed modes for organisms to find fitness: r-selection is about speed: rapid reproduction, fast growth, many offspring K-selection is about carrying capacity: slow development, robust fit…
- Stages Of Evolution Of Plant Species
“Stages of Evolution of Plant Species” , from the Whole Earth Catalog , Spring 1970.
- Tools The Technium And The Importance Of Agency
On Kevin Kelly’s “Technium” and why human innovation is different than the biological variety.
- Circle of Life
Kevin Kelly: Because of the circle, no organism is privileged with being above another. A circle has not top. We humans are somewhere in the lineup, but where depends on how you turn the chart. This circle of life als…
- Map Of Human Metabolic Pathways
Map of humanmetabolic pathways. (via @burny_tech)
- Possibility Space
Gordon Brander: There is something powerful about this notion of possibility spaces, both from a theory standpoint, and as a way of seeing. It causes you to approach challenges in a different way. You don’t need to be…
- Evolution Has No Goal
There’s a common misconception that evolution is "seeking" fitness — that there’s some inherent motivation in the process pushing toward a particular objective. But evolution is an undirected process of mutation, test…
- Illustrations By Naturalist Ernst Haeckel
Illustrations by naturalistErnst Haeckel. From his collection Kunstformen der Natur.
- The Two Enlightenments
We learn about "The Enlightenment" as a singular entity, a historical age associated with rationality, scientific inquiry, humanism, and liberty. The Enlightenment and scientific revolution were defining moments that…
- Why Evolution Has No Goal
Evolution is a roiling mess of substance and interaction. Order emerges from the stew. Fitness allowing one collection of chemicals to outlast another. A true complex system is confounding and inscrutable, bucking att…
- David Deutsch
A gene pool is carved and whittled through generations of ancestral natural selection to fit [a particular] environment. In theory a knowledgeable zoologist, presented with the complete transcript of a genome [the set…
- Evolution
Environmental challenge + gradual adaptation + eons of time = magic.
- Baron Caterpillar
The baron caterpillar. Nature finds a way.
- Why Evolution Has No Goal
Jason Fried recently wrote that we should teach iteration as a subject, or technique at least, in schools. Another subject wildly undertaught is evolution. Not just the "creation vs. evolution" Big Picture story of ho…
- Exapting Technologies
New forms of technology tend not to materialize from thin air. The nature of innovation takes existing known technologies and remixes, extends, and co-opts them to create novelty. Gordon Brander refers to it in this p…
- Weekend Reading: Raising Less, the Adjacent Possible, and Fire and Motion
🧰 There Are More Uses For A Screwdriver Than You Can Calculate Biologist Stuart Kauffman on biological functions and the "adjacent possible": The unexpected uses of features of organisms, or technologies, are precise…
- Blood is Thicker Than Water
This article is excerpted from Steve Stewart-Williams's latest book, The Ape that Understood the Universe. On the purposes of altruism and kin selection: The details of Hamilton’s theory are complex, but the basic ide…
- Antifragility and Tinkering in Biology (and in Business) Flexibility Provides an Efficient Epigenetic Way to Manage Risk
I found this piece cited in Taleb’s Antifragile, a unique case of an author citing a paper that was itself inspired by a galley of that book. The concept of “antifragility” (systems that gain or improve from disorder,…
- Weekend Reading: Darwinian Gastronomy, Humboldt, and Taxes
🌶 Darwinian Gastronomy Turns out cultures from warmer climates evolved a taste for spicy foods to combat the presence of more diverse bacteria: Alas, nothing in nature turns out to be that simple. Researchers now sug…
- Biology and Culture
In going through the backlog of Sam Harris’s Waking Up podcast, I put on this not-too-recent episode with Bret Weinstein, evolutionary biologist, free thinker, and polymath that I’ve heard in a number of other intervi…