Evolution 101

Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Problem of Species

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

posted by Zachary Moore at 5:15 AM

10 Comments:

  • Loved your presentation. One minor quibble, it's the California Central Valley, not Simi Valley. Simi Valley is a small valley north of L.A. and south of the Grapevine. http://www.answers.com/topic/transverse-ranges

    By Blogger RWW, at 11:28 AM  

  • Hi, in your post "What is NOT Evolution?" you criticize Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, about is evolutionary concept. But I like to ear from you about epigenetics (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml). More, if we come a long run in the evolutionary path, if we belong to a big family in the gene pool, why do still exist a lot of persons considered by the society some how inferior and source of strong repulse. You can’t explain that just with genes…

    By Blogger Gente Séria, at 3:32 PM  

  • By the way, I like very much your podcast :)

    By Blogger Gente Séria, at 3:37 PM  

  • Yes, about this epigenetic business: do you think that it threatens the "selfish gene" concept in any way, or is it just a wrinkle on its surface, or perhaps another subtlety associated with it and therefore shouldn't be that surprising when we come to think about it? I can sort of imagine what this would look like in abstract, provided we are talking about replicating entities in the sense Richard Dawkins elaborates in "The Selfish Gene" and "The Extended Phenotype". I've read Matt Ridley's "Nature via Nurture", and he talked about genes being switched on by environmental factors, though I don't remember if he mentioned inheritance of life experiences via switches. I've also read Sean B. Carroll's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful", and he too talks about switches, but again, not about inheritance so much, and he mentioned them as being present on the chromosome, adjacent to the "gene proper". Are the switches talked about in the BBC article different, floating about near the chromosomes or something like that? Would this make a fundamental difference? Maybe the fact that changes can be inherited is because natural selection itself - acting ultimately on genes - engineered some flexibility into organisms (“survival machines”) so that more information could be passed on to offspring, predisposing them to more effectively cope with life's challenges? Of course, an entity must be benefiting from this arrangement for it to count as an adaptation. In all this, I’m assuming that the gene is the ultimate unit of natural selection. Perhaps you have a different view?

    By Blogger Lui, at 11:44 PM  

  • Great presentation, by the way. I was reading about the tyranny of the discontinuous mind in "The Ancestor's Tale" and it struck me how silly it is, in retrospect, to talk about species as essentialist categories.

    By Blogger Lui, at 1:27 AM  

  • Hi, this is not so related to your page, but it is the site you asked me 1 month ago about the abs diet. I tried it, worked well. Well here is the site

    By Blogger adam, at 2:06 PM  

  • Hello I just entered before I have to leave to the airport, it's been very nice to meet you, if you want here is the site I told you about where I type some stuff and make good money (I work from home): here it is

    By Blogger adam, at 6:42 PM  

  • YouTube says parts 2 and 3 are no longer available. Can you fix this?

    By Blogger Mike, at 9:04 AM  

  • Part 1Part 2Part 3

    By Blogger assikilo aka ася, at 1:53 AM  

  • Hey. Nice work. I just bumped into your page and noticed you and I share a common interest in Sasquatch. You should probably check out the account I just wrote of my Yeti-hunting expedition that started deep in the woods of Arkansas and is headed now to Australia.
    Holla,
    M-

    By Blogger the Albino Bowler, at 2:01 PM  

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