8
POPSEvo Psych "Like other critics, he has no doubt that evolution shaped the human brain. How could it be otherwise, when evolution has shaped every other human organ? But evo psych's claims that human behavior is constrained by mental modules that calcified in the Stone Age make sense "only if the environmental challenges remain static enough to sculpt an instinct over evolutionary time," Pigliucci points out. If the environment, including the social environment, is instead dynamic rather than static—which all evidence suggests—then the only kind of mind that makes humans evolutionarily fit is one that is flexible and responsive, able to figure out a way to make trade-offs, survive, thrive and reproduce in whatever social and physical environment it finds itself in"
12
POPSGod or Darwin? some statistics... though i used the same headline as the article, i do not agree to it. Evolution is not equal to religion and they are merely two different perspectives of the same reality. Each one portrays a different worldview, a different world, a different view. the direction in religion is one of preservation, maintaining the existing order as it , whilst in evolution the dynamics are in constant motion of exploring new orders which by nature are transitory.
16
POPSHOME... The full movie can be watched: http://www.youtube.com/homeproject
6
POPSEarliest piece of erotic art uncovered “How far this ‘symbolic explosion’ associated with the origins and dispersal of our species reflects a major, mutation-driven reorganisation in the cognitive capacities of the human brain — perhaps associated with a similar leap forward in the complexity of language, remains a fascinating and contentious issue.”
17
POPSThe mumbo-jumbo This is really a foolish act of Collins. What he fails to recognize is that the only strength of the (absurdity of) belief in god/goddess and the like is its claim to be out of human perceptive reach!
10
POPSWhat if, the alien, is no more than a human? These same thermodynamic arguments should also hold on Earth-like planets elsewhere in the cosmos. And if that's the case, then ET may not be so alien after all, as Higgs and Pudritz imply with the extraordinary conclusion to their paper: "The combined actions of thermodynamics and subsequent natural selection suggest that the genetic code we observe on the Earth today may have significant features in common with life throughout the cosmos." Now that's a thought....
9
POPSRage Against the Art Gene On the other hand: Stephen Jay Gould. Until his death in 2002, he stood as one of the great champions and evangelists of science, as well as one of the most exacting critics of its tendency to overreach. According to Gould, life's history needs to be understood not just as the result of natural forces explicable by science, but also of contingency: strange, unplanned events that change the course of everything that follows. The arts, likewise, may be one of the many adaptively useless byproducts of a complex brain that evolved to perform other tasks. something rings false in the overriding impression created by evolutionary esthetics: that a mental trait is ennobled when we supply it with Darwinian roots. Gould, the self-described "naturalist by profession, and a humanist at heart," knew the opposite to be true. An interesting debate, one that surely is only beginning as we enter this era of progress...
22
POPSWhat are the limits of life? The Chihuahuan Desert: Scientists have found that about half of the organisms at Cuatro Cienegas are most closely related to marine life, even though the oases here have not been in contact with the ocean for tens of millions of years. The Intensive Care Unit: “We keep inventing new antibiotics, but bacteria evolve resistance almost immediately, so we’re constantly playing catch-up,” he says. “How can we make the best use of the antibiotics we’ve got now? We’re using mathematical models to generate hypotheses about how we can shape and alter prescription practice to minimize or delay the evolution of resistance.” “It’s Darwinism at its finest,”
37
POPSBorn believers: How your brain creates God the second view is made of two arguments: 1) "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. 2)an overdeveloped sense of cause and effect which primes us to see purpose and design everywhere, even where there is none. these two statements combined, lead the way for the invention of god, goddess and the like. Interesting...
18
POPSTomorrow the responsibility for evolution may rest on our own shoulders Our Post-Darwinian Future; Pluripotent stem cells, gene targeting, and artificial chromosomes could leapfrog over evolution and let us take control of our genome, maybe even turn ourselves into a whole new species. “There is no scientific basis for thinking that we couldn’t,” Silver says. “There’s nothing really special about the human genome. There’s nothing that says this is the end.” more from the article: "Who should have the final say on when and how the human genome should be changed? On the other hand, if technology can enable us to eliminate disease and disabilities from our children or insert genes that might make them smarter or better looking, why wouldn’t we use it?"
17
POPSThe Serious Need for Play “Play has to be reframed and seen not as an opposite to work but rather as a complement,” Curiosity, imagination and creativity are like muscles: if you don’t use them, you lose them.”
16
POPSRobots Evolve And Learn How to Lie "The fourth colony sometimes evolved “cheater” robots instead, which would light up to tell the others that the poison was food, while they themselves rolled over to the food source and chowed down without emitting so much as a blink. Some robots, though, were veritable heroes. They signaled danger and died to save other robots. “Sometimes,” Floreano says, “you see that in nature—an animal that emits a cry when it sees a predator; it gets eaten, and the others get away—but I never expected to see this in robots.”
13
POPSNatural selection "How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far "truer" in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?" "We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we only see that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were." beautifully written. i think that even in the course of ones own life, one can often be so blind to the processes that shape and dictate his perception. A different poetry of existence is needed.
13
POPSIs Space Travel the Next Step in Human Evolution? "Maybe it’s much ado about nothing, or maybe it’s something more. Perhaps as space travel becomes more mainstream we’ll have the opportunity to understand more about ourselves, the cosmos, and our relationship to rest of the universe."
10
POPSPaleofantasy about the future. I really don't get why people fantasize over an ideal past. was it easier, more interesting and stimulating 100 years ago? i don't think so. i would much rather live now and anticipate the now which is to come after... ;-)
16
POPSStorytelling is a carrier "Maybe storytelling - from TV to folk tales - actually serves some specific evolutionary function," says Gottschall. "They're not just by-products of evolutionary adaptation."
21
POPSOn the Origin of Species
A must read. "the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. This fundamental subject of Natural Selection" "namely, that each species has been independently created - is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable" The first of our six abridged extracts; can't wait for the res
23
POPSReverse evolution in real-time These findings provide further insights into the basic understanding of how evolution and diversity are generated and maintained. On the one hand, it provides evidence for evolution happening through changes in the distribution of alleles in a population (so-called standing genetic variation), from generation to generation, rather than the appearance of mutations, from one generation to the next. On the other hand, as Henrique notes, 'It has implications for the definition of biodiversity: some of the 'reversed' flies may be phenotypically identical to the ancestral flies, but they are genetically different. How then do we define biodiversity?' interesting experiments.
19
POPSThe blurry line between life, nonlife Twitches of life are showing up where life shouldn't exist. In southern Africa, for example, scientists burrowed 2 miles beneath the earth's surface,discovering bacteria that feed on radioactive rocks. "That's crazier than any science fiction," said Pratt, part of the team that made the 2006 discovery. "This is life that shouldn't be there. Except it is." interesting concept.
22
POPSIt is not the dope, it's the dopamine :) I think this finding is interesting in the light of the latest and fast growing body of experimental results in neuroscience; finding correlation (some are straight forward, and not very complex) of so called unique attributes to genetics and physiology. this might carry with it a fundamental perceptual change. first we learned that the earth is not the center, than we realized that the human emergence is part of a bigger continuum (evolution that is) and now we come to know that one own psyche is not unique...
16
POPSDarwin is an ethical inspiration Freud's explanation in 1920 was that "humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love. The first was when it realised that our earth was not the centre of the universe ... The second was when biological research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created and relegated him to a descent from the animal world". One wonders how long it took for Copernicus to be treated with respect; one scholar of Darwin suggested it could be another couple of centuries before we can forgive the man. very interesting quotation of Freud; i do agree that both scholars represent 2 major revolutions in the very definition of what is a human.
15
POPSThe Next Big Sensation? "Technological advances will someday be complemented by cultural changes, and cavorting with robots just won't seem weird anymore." Why is it important to humans that machines are beginning to touch us back? "It was incredibly important to humans when robots started to look at you, recognize a face and make eye contact," "The eye contact turned out to be a significant Darwinian button. We are hard-wired for that. That's how we sense the presence of an other. Same thing with touch. That is the way we connect with an other that knows about us, that understands us. It is in our evolution. We are hard-wired to communicate with each other by touch. It's how we stroke babies, how we want to be comforted. . . . "A heartbeat is a powerful way of signaling the presence"
18
POPSSexual strategies Breaking it down to the genes and fertility percentages does create a nice twist sometimes to the world of sex, and being a human. ;-)
Newest Clips
see Newest Clips
5
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update