Says this German mag, in translation: Farewell to the World Formula The laws of nature are ephemeral Natural laws are in line with established opinion to immutable component of the natural sciences. A physicist and a philosopher now say goodbye to the idea. by Edu Why so and not otherwise? Until recently was Lee Smolin, of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo thinkers from Canada, expire this idea. But now he opposes her, along with the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger of Harvard Law School. They have a thick book published entitled “The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time”. In it they go from “most interesting feature of the natural world”, namely the fact “that it is what it is Read More ›

Just so we know, from New Scientist: Primates have forward-facing eyes, and humans are no exception. But look closely, says Eric Denion at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research in Caen, and you’ll see that human eyes are different. … They found that the human eye sockets, or orbits, were much wider relative to their height than the other ape eye sockets. What’s more, the outer margin – the side of the orbit furthest from the nose – is recessed much further back in the human skull than in other ape skulls. This means that when we swivel our eyeballs sideways, we have a lateral view of the world that is unimpeded by the bones of the skull, Read More ›

Over at Evolution News & Views, we are told that two Israeli researchers are “ flirting with Lamarck”: Lamarck? He was the much-ridiculed Frenchman (1744–1829) who was right about the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In other words, stuff that happened to our grandparents and parents could help shape our genome, and affect our health and sense of well-being. See, for example, Can epigenetics even shape attitudes? Here’s the abstract: “Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg?” We suggest this question is not a paradox. The Modern Synthesis envisions speciation through genetic changes in germ cells via random mutations, an “Egg first” scenario, but perhaps epigenetic inheritance mechanisms can transmit adaptive changes initiated in the soma (“Chicken first”). Open access Read More ›

Mow lawn, have beer, see this: Here. Back soon. – O’Leary for News

Here are links to O’Leary for News’ posts on what research tells us about animal minds. This page is a work in progress; feel free to check back or leave comments. 1. First, there is no fixed “tree” or “scale” of animal intelligence. See, for example,  Matching Darwin’s “Tree of Life,” the “Tree of Intelligence” comes crashing down” (2014 12 08) It is true that chimps can learn to spring simple snare traps that are set for them without getting hurt. But does that really put them on a continuum with humans? They do not do nearly as well as human toddlers on an abstract reasoning test. Not only is there a vast gulf between human and chimpanzee intelligence but chimpanzees Read More ›

Alfred Russel Wallace’s take, explicitly. From ScienceDaily: Not every encounter between predator and prey results in death. A new study co-authored by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor suggests that prey emit warning cues that can ultimately lead to both their survival and that of their predators. The hypothesis addresses a 150-year-old mystery of evolution on how warning signals of animals and plants arise and explains animals’ instinctive avoidances of dangerous prey. … In 1867, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-proponent with Charles Darwin of the theory of evolution through natural selection, proposed that animals evolve colorful, distinctively recognizable appearances to advertise their distastefulness or toxicity to predators. Despite a number of attempts, however, no satisfactory evolutionary mechanism for the origin of Read More ›

There are some key motifs that often come up in discussions of design theory and linked ideas. Popperian, as captioned, has posed one of these. Notice, his view, that we GENERATE emotions, suggesting a dynamo churning away and generating electricity. That is, the motif that would reduce explanations to mechanisms is here revealed.  I think it is well worth the pause to address it by headlining an in-thread response: ___________ >>Popperian, re: why doesn’t someone start out by explaining how human beings generate emotions, then point out how the universality of computation does not fit that explanation. Effectively stating “It’s magic and computers are not magic doesn’t cut it.” Pushing the problem into an inexplicable mind hat exists in an Read More ›

In “How You Consist of Trillions of Tiny Machines,” a review of two books, Australian palaeontologist Tim Flannery encapsulates the problem facing origin of life studies. Assessing Paul Falkowski’s Life’s Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable, he notes, Today, driven by ongoing technological innovations, the exploration of the “nanoverse,” as the realm of the minuscule is often termed, continues to gather pace. One of the field’s greatest pioneers is Paul Falkowski, a biological oceanographer who has spent much of his scientific career working at the intersection of physics, chemistry, and biology. His book Life’s Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable focuses on one of the most astonishing discoveries of the twentieth century—that our cells are comprised of a series of Read More ›

After SpaceX’s “loss of mission.” But are we missing something here? Aldrin, lunar module pilot for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission here: True, the ripple effects from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster going boom in the Florida skies are many. But the take-home message given the NASA-private sector bond is one of striving for reliability, safety, but also affordability. Joining me in this view is my longtime friend, Norm Augustine, retired Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin. “Successes in commercial space transportation are not only important in their own right, they also free NASA to do that which it does best … namely, push the very frontiers of space and knowledge.” So let’s press ahead beyond a failure to future Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: A few years ago biologists found that a prominent change in pigeon plumage, head crests, could be traced to a mutation in a single gene. Now the research team has found an almost exact repeat in the evolutionary playbook in distantly related doves. Evolutionary playbook? Doesn’t that imply a strategy? Oh wait, that’s heresy. Watch your language around Top People! Evolutionary biologist Michael Shapiro and his team from the University of Utah made international headlines in 2013 when they found that a prominent change in pigeon plumage, head crests, could be traced to a mutation in a single gene. Now, in the new advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, the research team has found an almost Read More ›

Two days ago, a big meeting in Maryland of researchers into non-coding DNA (alleged “junk DNA” ) wrapped up, and people have been writing to us about the various, so-far unofficially publicized findings that friends have told them about. One researcher whose specialty is orphan genes observed that although we have similar genes to mice, the DHS regions in the DNA associated with these genes feature only 5% similarity between mice and humans. This is all the more peculiar because the eventual development of mice is very similar to that of humans even though so many differences in regulatory pathways exist. He was part of a research team that discovered this: Abstract: To study the evolutionary dynamics of regulatory DNA, we mapped Read More ›

On the iconic lecture room psychopath, fFrom the British Psychological Society Research Digest: So the textbooks mostly won’t tell you about Gage’s rehabilitation, or provide you with the latest evidence on his injuries. Instead, you might hear how hear never worked again and became a vagrant, or that he became a circus freak for the rest of his life, showing off the holes in his head. “The most egregious error,” says Griggs, “seems to be that Gage survived for 20 years with the tamping iron embedded in his head!”. Does any of this matter? Griggs argues strongly that it does. There are over one and half million students enrolled in introductory psychology courses in the US alone, and most of Read More ›

It is often said that all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Yesterday with the publishing of a new paper out of Israel, and two centuries later, Lamarck’s pre Darwinian theory of evolution, sometimes referred to as the inheritance of acquired characteristics, prophetically completed the cycle.  Read more

A philosopher used to say, beware the man of one book. Today, we might say, be cautious considering the claims of the scientist of one gene. From New Scientist we hear,: The leap from single-celled life to multicellular creatures is easier than we ever thought. And it seems there’s more than one way it can happen. … At some point after life first emerged, some cells came together to form the first multicellular organism. This happened perhaps as early as 2.1 billion years ago. Others followed – multicellularity is thought to have evolved independently at least 20 times – eventually giving rise to complex life, such as humans. How about making it easier? complex life such as millipedes? But no Read More ›

Researchers: Half of iron atoms in some cores were processed by microbes 2.5 bya/Clark Johnson 2.5 billion years ago? That’s the theory here: These ancient deposits, up to 150 meters deep, were begging for explanation, says Johnson. Scientists thought the iron had entered the ocean from hot, mineral-rich water released at mid-ocean vents that then precipitated to the ocean floor. Now Johnson and Li, who is currently at Nanjing University in China, show that half of the iron in banded iron was metabolized by ancient bacteria living along the continental shelves. More. … Biologists say this process “is really deep in the tree of life, but we’ve had little evidence from the rock record until now,” Johnson says. “These ancient Read More ›