Darwin the Newtonian. Part III. In what sense does genetic drift 'exist'?

I t has been about 50 years since Motoo Kimora and King and Jukes proposed that a substantial fraction of genetic variation can be selective...

darwinian evolutionevolutiongenetic driftmolecular evolutionpopulation geneticsselection

The Centrality of Cooperation in Life: a first installment

A recent story in the New York Times science section about the importance of cooperation in ant colonies reminded us that we've been f...

biological mechanismschancecompetitioncooperationdarwinian evolutiondevelopmentnatural selectionThe Mermaid's Tale

How long would it take to walk to the ends of the Earth?

"Who started walking out of Africa? Not everybody walked. Very few people walked, and they walked to the ends of the Earth. The gene...

behavioral evolutiondarwinian evolutionevolutionary psychologygene flowhuman population historymigrationnatural selectionOut of Africapopulation expansionsselective migration

For God's sake!

We have just reviewed a book by CE Cosans, called Owen's Ape & Darwin's Bulldog: Beyond Darwinism and Creationism (Indiana Univ...

apesbrainsCreationismDarwindarwinian evolutiondarwinismhippocampus minorHuxleyOwen

Genetic leaf-litter

There are many ways in which everyone is a conceptual prisoner, encaged in culturally based limits. We are born to, and trained in and entr...

complex trait geneticsdarwinian evolutiondisease geneticsDNA sequencegenomewide association studiesGWASpopulation geneticsrare variants

The strident atheist scientists

The BBC has a 5-minute interview program and on May 16 their website aired such an interview with Richard Dawkins. Although a public figure...

Atheismdarwinian evolutionDawkinsevolutionpopular sciencereligion and sciencescience education

The Darwin parable?

Every human culture is embedded in stories about itself in the world, its lore , based on some accepted type of evidence. Science is a kind...

Darwindarwinian evolutionparablesscientific humilitytheory