09Jul 2026 by Post

Re-evaluating Lamarck’s Contribution to Evolutionary Thought

adaptations, biology, conscious purposiveness, determinism, Edmund Ware Sinnott, environment, epigenetics, Eva Jablonka, Evolution, Evolution: The History of an Idea, freedom, George Levine, Georges Cuvier, history, history of science, homeostasis, inheritance, instinctive regulation, J. Scott Turner, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Jerry Coyne, Jessica Riskin, Lamarckism, Laurent Larson, Marion Lamb, Motivation, neo-Darwinian synthesis, personality, Peter J. Bowler, Purpose and Desire, regeneration, Skeptic Magazine, teleology, The Power of Life, Yale University
The rehabilitation of Lamarck and the important work of scholars of the past (i.e., Sinnott) and present (i.e., Turner) suggest an interesting conclusion. Source
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15Mar 2024 by Post

Notes on the Mysterious Origin of Hippos

Africa, Anthracotheriidae, biology, brachiopods, bryozoans, cephalopods, Charles Darwin, constancy, corals, Doliochoeridae, Ernst Mayr, Evolution, evolutionary derivations, foraminifers, fossil record, genera, Georges Cuvier, ghost lineages, Hippopotamidae, Hippopotamus amphibius, hippos, Intelligent Design, Louis Agassiz, Martin Pickford, megafauna, National Geographic, ostracods, paleontology, species, stasis, subfamilies, trilobites, ” and waiting around without any function that might explain why natural selection working on random mutations bothered to engineer them
The family Hippopotamidae appears abruptly in the fossil record — like all the other groups that I have so far investigated in detail. Source
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16Jan 2023 by Post

Old Wine in New Bottles: How Darwin Recruited Malthus to Fortify a Failed Idea from Antiquity

abiogenesis, Alphonse de Candolle, Aristotle, atheists, atomism, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, Christianity, complexification, David Hume, Edward Aveling, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, Evolution, Friedrich Engels, Georges Cuvier, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Greece, Homo sapiens, Intelligent Design, Karl Marx, Law of Correlation, Lucretius, Matthew Arnold, Middle Ages, natural selection, Origin of Species, Patrick Matthew, Plato, Poor Law, Rome, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Malthus, transhumanism, Unmoved Mover, Victorian England, William Paley
It was undoubtedly a tremendous philosophical coup for Darwin whose knowledge of formal philosophy was limited. Source
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