Darwin and Evolution – Page 162

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Homology for Dummies

May 5, 2004

Current Biology likes to give its readers primers on various concepts. The topic in the May 4 issue is homology.1 Caleb Webber and Chris P. Ponting explain this important evolutionary term for the rest of us. The Q&A format also introduces homology’s siblings: analogy, orthology, paralogy, xenology, and synteny. Some readers may not realize that […]

Darwin and Evolution

Origin-of-Life Researcher Leslie Orgel Interviewed

May 5, 2004

The May 4 issue of Current Biology1 contains an interview with organic chemist Leslie Orgel of the Salk Institute, who in 1974 published the book The Origin of Life on Earth with Stanley Miller of spark-discharge fame (see 05/02/2003 and 10/31/2002 headlines). He considers his biggest mistake not thinking of the RNA World scenario first […]

Politics and Ethics

Eugenics Documentary Opens at Holocaust Museum

April 22, 2004

Michael Ollove at the Baltimore Sun reports on a new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum entitled Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race. The exhibit shows a 1937 Nazi propaganda film that invokes the law of natural selection as support for weeding out the unfit. Ollove writes, The narrator declares that “we humans have sinned […]

Darwin and Evolution

Can Evolution Create Homologous Structures by Different Paths?

April 22, 2004

Günter Thebien (Friedrich Schuller U, Jena, Germany) is baffled about how two plants arrived at similar structures by different evolutionary pathways. In the April 22 issue of Nature,1 he asks, Structures that occur in closely related organisms and that look the same are usually considered to be homologous – their similarity is taken to arise […]

Geology

Rethinking the Geological Layers

March 5, 2004

One of the most formative ideas in Darwin’s intellectual journey was the concept of gradualism, the principle of “small agencies and their cumulative effects.” This idea became a dominant motif in his philosophy of life. Describing how the assumption of gradualism permeated his last book (on earthworms) shortly before his death, Janet Browne, in her […]

Darwin and Evolution

Happy Darwin Day?

February 13, 2004

Humanists hope to have a new international holiday by 2009: Darwin Day. (Feb. 12 was Darwin’s birthday as well as Abe Lincoln’s, so it’s already set aside as a holiday in America, but promoters want this to be an international event.) According to Robert Evans’ story in Reuters, the British Humanist Association believes such a […]

Darwin and Evolution

Why Darwin Is Like Yoda, and Darwinism Like Marxism

February 4, 2004

Homage for the master is palpable in John Vandermeer’s review (Science, Jan. 23)1 of a thick new book entitled Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution by Odling-Smee, Laland and Feldman (Princeton, 2004). Vandermeer seems almost worshipful in his opening lines: The nascent germ of many novel ideas in biology can be traced directly or […]

Darwin and Evolution

E-I-E-I-O in Old McDarwin’s Animal Farm

February 3, 2004

Some beliefs about origins are more equal than others.

Fossils

La Brea Tar Pits Trap Scientists

January 24, 2004

Visitors to the La Brea Tar Pits are not told the whole truth about the fossils.

Darwin and Evolution

Evolution As Assumption

December 20, 2002

51; Reasoning requires premises: axioms or truths taken for granted. Notice the premise of reasoning stated in a recent article on Science Daily: “Because all living organisms inherit their genomes from ancestral genomes, computational biologists at MIT reasoned that they could use modern-day genomes to reconstruct the evolution of ancient microbes.” They used an evolutionary […]

Darwin and Evolution

The Why and How of Leopard Spots

October 20, 2002

51; A leopard may not be able to change its spots (Jeremiah 13:23), but maybe evolution can – if evolutionists – or Rudyard Kipling – can tell us how or why. A headline in the BBC News promised to tell us “how the leopard got its spots,” while PhysOrg promised to reveal, “Why the leopard […]

Biomimetics

Mutating Evolution Into Design

July 20, 2002

51; The word evolve gets used in funny ways. As Paul Nelson has noted, it often becomes a Designer substitute. Look how an article in New Scientist employed it: Could a 3D printer help to create in minutes what nature took millions of years to evolve – the perfect insect wing? Tiny robotic insects would […]

Cell Biology

Adult Stem Cells Lead Health Progress

July 20, 2002

51; Adult stem cells (AS) and induced pluripotent stem cells from adult tissues (iPS) continue to rack up tallies over embryonic stem cells (ESA). Do we really need the embryonic variety? Some continue to say yes, even though the practice of harvesting human embryos creates serious ethical questions for many. Controlling fate: If you’d rather […]

Darwin and Evolution

Peppered Moths Are Back

May 20, 2002

51; One might think that past embarrassments about the peppered moth as evidence for evolution would keep evolutionists reluctant to mention them. A team from the University of Liverpool either didn’t get the message, or shed all reluctance anyway. They published a new paper about Biston betularia in Science,1 calling the moth story “a textbook […]

Darwin and Evolution

A Hairy Evolution Story

May 20, 2002

51; A mammal hair was found in amber. It is claimed to be 100 million years old, but it is identical to modern mammal hair. What is the meaning of this find? How should it be interpreted? It may say more about the modern evolutionist than about evolution itself. New Scientist told the […]

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