Mutation and evolution

Category: Curious Disconnect

  • Some thoughts on the conceptual immune system of the “Synthesis”

    As noted in Bad Takes #3, there is a long tradition of dismissing internalist-structuralist thinking on the false grounds that such ideas are necessarily appeals to teleology or mystical inner urges. If an alternative theory can be dismissed in this manner a priori, as an absurdity, then no further effort…

  • Bad takes #2. Evolution by “mutation pressure”

    Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully. We look forward to those more meaningful debates. Until then, fending off bad takes is the order of the day! See the Bad Takes Index. In…

  • Bad takes #4. Attacking the phrase “mutation-driven.”

    Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully. We look forward to those more meaningful debates. Until then, fending off bad takes is the order of the day! See the Bad Takes Index. In…

  • Bad takes #5. It’s just contingency

    Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully. We look forward to those more meaningful debates. Until then, fending off bad takes is the order of the day! See the Bad Takes Index. A…

  • Bad takes #3. Mutation bias as an independent cause of adaptation.

    Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully. We look forward to those more meaningful debates. Until then, fending off bad takes is the order of the day! See the Bad Takes Index. Svensson…

  • Bad takes #1. We have long known

    Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully. We look forward to those more meaningful debates. Until then, fending off bad takes is the order of the day! See the Bad Takes Index. A…

  • PoMo, Oh No! A comment on The Logic of Chance

    For a long time I was meaning to write a review of Eugene Koonin’s The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution.  The book has been out for over 6 years now.  In lieu of an actual review, I’d like to discuss Koonin’s characterization of an emerging view…

  • A very bad theory about theories

    In some venues, this is a familiar trope: a creationist asserts that evolution is “just a theory,” and a science advocate responds, explaining that, for scientists, a “theory” is a thoroughly tested, well established explanation. Yet, for over 200 years, scientists have used “theory” for conjectures that are not well…

  • Understanding the Mutational Landscape Model

    This post started out as a wonky rant about why a particular high-profile study of laboratory adaptation was mis-framed as though it were a validation of the mutational landscape model of Orr and Gillespie (see Orr, 2003), when in fact the specific innovations of that theory were either rejected, or not tested critically.…

  • Constructive neutral evolution on Sandwalk

    The interesting things at Sandwalk always seem to happen when I’m not looking.  On Sunday, while I was out west taking the offspring to start university at UBC, Larry Moran posted a blog on Constructive Neutral Evolution that has elicited almost 200 comments.  Alas, many of the comments are not particularly…