Galton remembered
Steve Jones writes in the BBC News on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Francis Galton's death: "Francis Galton: The man who drew up the 'ugly map' of Britain". He cites many interesting...
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A trip to Darwin's home
Today I visited Down House, Charles Darwin's home southeast of London. Mark Pallen, my gracious host from the University of Birmingham, brought us to the house, where we met Randal Keynes. Also on the...
View ArticleSteno: not just for stratigraphy
Matthew Cobb, guest-blogging at Why Evolution Is True, gives an appreciation of Nicholas Steno's contributions to biology: "Google’s doodle: women have eggs". ‘The testicles of women are analogous to...
View ArticleDarwiniana
Larry Moran posts a bit of Darwin history, focusing on a meeting with William Gladstone "Happy Birthday Charles Darwin". Our quiet, however, was broken a couple of days ago by Gladstone calling here.—I...
View ArticleAnthropology 105, lecture 8: Ears
Synopsis: The auditory system reveals some of the principles of Mendelian inheritance.This lecture uses the auditory system to illustrate Mendelian inheritance. First the earlobes -- a classic example...
View ArticleMailbag: Gill slits and Paley
From a reader: I'm the TA for an Intro to Philosophy course. This week, we're discussing Paley's Design Argument, Darwin's argument(s), and the evidence that favors Darwin's arguments over Paley's....
View ArticleQuote: E. Ray Lankester on English for nomenclature
Here's a sentiment for popular science from the Victorian Age, from the translation note on Ernst Haeckel's The History of Creation, which was supervised by E. Ray Lankester:I have not attempted to...
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Blumenbach, Haeckel, Dobzhansky
Here's an illustration of the history of biology: This is an ngram comparison, which counts the occurrences of the terms (in this case, Blumenbach, Haeckel, and Dobzhansky) in books published across...
View ArticleQuote: Haeckel on our ape "heirlooms"
Ernst Haeckel, in the History of Creation, English translation in the Project Gutenberg version:Thus, from a careful examination of the comparative anatomy of the Anthropoides, we obtain a similar...
View ArticleQuote: Huxley on traveler's tales and primate discovery
Thomas Huxley devoted his 1863 book, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, to describing what was then known about the anatomy and biology of the living apes, including gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees...
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Darwin's primate phylogeny
I'm doing some reading and ran across a 2009 post by Brian Switek ("Darwin, Ardi and the African apes"), who touched on a little-appreciated aspect of Darwin's conception of human relationships: Yet...
View ArticleStarting my descent through The Descent of Man: Introduction
I have a number of goals for 2013. Several of them will play out here on the weblog, a few others will lead to publications. A handful have more speculative outcomes, and we'll see how they turn out....
View Article"Where did it go wrong for Wallace's reputation?"
The BBC has an article by Kevin Leonard, pondering "Why does Charles Darwin eclipse Alfred Russel Wallace?" They both thought of the idea of natural selection, and by Wallace's death he was recognized...
View ArticleShipwrecked Wallace
Jerry Coyne has a guest post today by Andrew Berry, who recounts an episode in the early life of Alfred Russel Wallace: "The most poignant episode in all of the history of science".“When the danger...
View ArticleRemembering Wallace
Jerry Coyne has a guest post by Andrew Berry recognizing the history of Alfred Russel Wallace, co-innovator of the concept of natural selection: "A guest post for Wallace Day". The reasons for...
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