13Jun 2022 by Post

How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind

Alfred Russel Wallace, Animal Liberation, Anthony Flew, Anthony O’Hear, biology, consciousness, cosmogonism, Darwin, David Bentley Hart, David Hume, deism, Donald Hoffman, Erasmus Darwin, Europeans, Evolution, Francis Crick, How Darwin and Wallace Split over the Human Mind, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Lawrence Krauss, Lucretius, materialism, Michael Ruse, mind, natural selection, natural theology, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, Peter Singer, Racism, rationalism, Richard Dawkins, Richard Rorty, Richard Spilsbury, Stephen Hawking, Ternate letter, The Origin of Species, Thomas Huxley, Tom Wolfe
Marvelously free of racist prejudice, Wallace noted in his fieldwork in far-flung locations that primitive tribes were intellectually the equals of Europeans. Source
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04Jun 2022 by Post

Yes, Ants Think — Like Computers

Agouti, agriculture, algorithm, ant colony, antennae, anternet, ants, Bert Hölldobler, biology, brains, capybara, castes, cities, computer, computer programmers, consensus-building, Deborah M. Gordon, division of labor, E. O. Wilson, eggs, evolutionary biologists, foraging, humans, Intelligent Design, language, larvae, leafcutter ants, mammals, neurons, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, pheromones, pupae, slavery, Stanford University, superorganism, territorial wars, The Superorganism
Computer programmers have adapted some ant problem-solving methods to software programs (but without the need for complex chemical scents). Source
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15Apr 2022 by Post

How Plants Talk When We’re Not Around

anesthesia, associative learning, biology, Claude Bernard, communications, consciousness, fungi, gene expression, glutamate, Hailing Jin, heliotropism, Life Sciences, Mimosa pudica, miRNAs, nervous system, Neuroscience & Mind, plants, psychology, Rainer Hedrich, RNA, sensory hair, shameplant, TMAO, Venus flytrap, vernalization, worms
One genuine surprise in recent decades has been the discovery that plants have nervous systems like animals. Source
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08Apr 2022 by Post

Brain Neurons Are “Comparable to a Library”

axon, biology, brain, Brown University, Duke University, external world, Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, library, Max Planck Institute, NELL2, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, pinwheels, proteins, purpose, retina, Robo3, Rockefeller University, visual cortex
It’s one of those occasions in biology (not rare) when the term “intelligent design,” despite other merits, falls flat as a description. Source
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07Apr 2022 by Post

Evolutionary Psychologist Argues that Worms Feel Pain. But How?

Aimen Mirza, alarm system, biology, David Barash, earthworms, endothermic life, Evolution, evolutionary psychology, exothermic life, intelligence, invertebrates, Nautilus, neuroscience, Neuroscience & Mind, pain, panpsychism, Richard Dawkins, sentience, slaughter, Through a Glass Brightly, University of Washington, Wormmy
Wait. Barash’s hypothesis overlooks the fact that suffering is more than an alarm system. An alarm could be going off in an empty building. Source
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