"The Riddle of Organismal Agency" is now available as a paperback version! Edited by @alejandrofabregastejeda.com, Jan Baedke, Guido Prieto and Gregory Radick, the volume puts together reflections from #HistSci and #PhilSci on the topic of organismal agency. #HPBio www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o...

Been reading "What is Innateness?" by Paul Griffiths (2002) philpapers.org/rec/EGRWII in which he offers this very sound advice:

It’s going to be really ironic that the basic research the Silicon Valley bros fought so hard to cut to extinction is the thing that finally gives them real life extension.

“A lot of people are talking about how Jews in New York feel about @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social... Well, I’m a Jew in New York! And I’m out here canvassing with my community for Zohran!” Watch Madeline’s story about why she’s a New York Jew for Zohran:

I can't get into the psyche of people who would cut off the world's best researchers from teaching their students because they happened to be born farther away from you than you are comfortable with. www.chronicle.com/article/flor...

50 years ago, King & Wilson published a foundational paper that underlies the cis-regulatory paradigm (CRP) of #DevoEvo #EvoDevo, i.e., that *almost* all morphological evolution is driven by mutations in regulatory elements, rather than proteins, and it all arose from simple misunderstanding 🧪 🧵

Against imperialist, anti-Black narratives of “civil war” and “failed state” in Sudan, a movement resource on imperialism & counter-revolutionary war in Sudan, and how we can act in engaged solidarity with people in El-Fasher, in Darfur, and across Sudan. www.weavingourworlds.ca/beyond-sloga...

Spotted around NYC 👀 Early Voting is in full swing! Still in search of a voter guide? Check out ours: jfrej.org/ballot

Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back Andrea Gambarotto, Thomas van Es link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Old Yiddish ornithology pamphlet published in the USSR at an unknown date (~1919). Titled "How Birds Build Nests" ( ווי בויען פייגלאך נעסטן) by M. Bres. Seems to be from a series called "Nature and People" (נאַטור און מענש). www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/...

Scientists have described a new species of mouse opossum discovered in 2018 in the cloud forests of the Peruvian Andes, 2,664 meters (8,740 feet) above sea level. The find was reported by Mongabay Latam staff writer Yvette Sierra Praeli.

Wonderful article by @olivia.science. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...

How did regulation and agency arise before genes? Shirt-Ediss et al. model evolving protocell ecologies with the Araudia platform—showing how simple metabolic systems can “learn” to adapt to changing environments dialecticalsystems.eu/publications...

Add birdsong learning to the list of things Aristotle *did* think about: "Of little birds, some sing a different note from the parent birds, if they have been removed from the nest and have heard other birds singing..." (1/2)

An excellent example of enormous intellectual effort wasted only because people inconsistently use certain words. Here is a simple explanation: We know that every trait of an organism is determined *jointly* by the genes (G) and the environment (E) bc ...

Next, we share a new adaptation of the rousing Yiddish folk classic "Ale Brider" by our very own Josh Waletzky, originally released in a new pamphlet by the Northern California Workers Circle for its 125th anniversary.

Still puzzled by the debate on organismal agency? Our edited collection brings historians, philosophers, and scientists into dialogue—offering a wide array of perspectives. An affordable paperback edition will be out at the end of the month! www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o... #HPS #evobio #philsky

This is an awe-inspiring and fascinating study that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. However, the overall framing in terms of "innate versus learned” is unnecessary. The innate versus acquired dichotomy is outdated and has been for a long time. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

As a primatologist, Jane Goodall was a huge inspiration to me. I admired the way she describes chimpanzee behavior with such detail and empathy, and she’s inspired so many people and advocated for chimpanzee conservation and welfare. However, I'm dismayed at what her narrative leaves out (1/10)

Fascinating essay by @martinebotany.bsky.social on spiny solanums (tomato et al. relatives) as an example of all the important natural history research left to be done. Great observations on pollination and symbiosis... A very inspiring Sunday morning read! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Trump's very first example of the Smithsonian's "corrosive ideology" was an exhibit that correctly stated "Race is a human invention." How is scientific consensus (that biological races don't exist in humans) corrosive? We are asking scientists to co-sign our statement: forms.gle/kqKQF9CZ3jPB...

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Wohoo: @gjseverino.bsky.social's paper is accepted w minor revs in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences! "Social Contingency in Embodied Neural Networks relies on Co-Constructed Dynamical Mechanisms" Follow him + his insanely creative modeling research! Link to paper forthcoming

Complex Dynamics of Social Learning in Groups of Wild Arabian Babblers | doi.org/10.1093/behe... | Behavioral Ecology | #ornithology 🪶

I'm excited to share with you all a conference I'm planning Oct. 10-12: Dialectical Biology Today: Legacies of Richard Lewontin. It will be hybrid in Toronto and on zoom, so please join us however you can! Register for zoom link here: ihpst.utoronto.ca/events/diale...

It's the 125th birthday of the Workers Circle (@workerscircle.bsky.social‬)! Along with their social justice work, they also published Yiddish educational materials. The only zoology textbook in Yiddish, “The life of Animals”/ דאס לעבען פון חיות, was published by the Workers Circle in the 1920s.

Terrible picture, but it may be the best vagrant I’ve seen in my life. A Grey-tailed tattler, usually a bird of the pacific rim from Siberia to Australia was sighted at Huguenot memorial park in Florida.

An Intergeneric Hybrid Between Historically Isolated Temperate and Tropical Jays Following Recent Range Expansion | doi.org/10.1002/ece3... | Ecology and Evolution | #ornithology 🪶

as always, on the 11th of september: allende vive.

New semester, new lecture series 🎉Starting next month, we welcome amazing scholars to give online talks in the history and philosophy of life sciences. Find all dates and registration links here: rotorub.wordpress.com/roto-lecture... We look forward to seeing you there 🤗 #PhilSci #HistSci #HPBio

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite scientists, thinkers, and writers of all time, Stephen Jay Gould. He would have been 84 year old. “Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information; it is a creative human activity.” -S. J. Gould

Really interesting study showing learning of tool use in carrion crows! www.cell.com/current-biol...

"the presence of male degus in multi-female groups has a small but negative effect on the condition of females." onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

With great joy—and a touch of nervousness—I’m thrilled to share that my first academic monograph will be published by @mitpress.bsky.social in May 2026! It examines the organism–environment relationship in biology from an integrated #HPS perspective: mitpress.mit.edu/978026205282... #evosky #philsky

Wild jackdaws can learn to tolerate juveniles when it helps them exploit new foraging opportunities

Let’s delve into the epistemology of network analyses (as GPT would say)! My paper on networks as explanatory and non-explanatory is out in Synthese and Open Access :) link.springer.com/content/pdf/... #philsci #networks #philbio #topology

What is emergence? This is one of the most central ingredients of complexity, and a challenging one to formalize. Here's a paper by @seanmcarroll.bsky.social & Achyth Parola that attempts to classify different forms of emergence. @manlius.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468

Have you been wondering what we've been doing in our TWCF @templetonworld.bsky.social project on animal joy? This video wonderfully produced by Richard Sergay @storiesofimpact.bsky.social explains all! www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY...

Sex-reversal in birds (genetically male/female but appear female/male) is surprisingly common. Best detail: A genetically male bird called a laughing kookaburra had recently laid an egg. (1/2) By @phiejacobs.bsky.social on @science.org

Banger paper! “Perhaps we should abandon the search for ‘cognition’ in terms of representational capacities distinct from systems for sensing and moving” royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

“This was AI slop. Not only that. It was AI slop on ScienceDirect, a ‘premier platform for scientific, health and technical literature.’ I contemplated that the linked paper used a very idiosyncratic definition. But no. The AI-generated definition was a complete fraud in any conceivable way.”

New specimen of the enantiornithean ("opposite bird") Shangyang with evidence of an iridescent feather crest: elifesciences.org/articles/103... 🪶🧪 (📷Li et al.)

Really interesting study showing the potential role of females in shaping cowbird behavioral and social development! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I learned a lot working on this new paper with this group of network scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and behavioural ecologists. We're hoping it helps anyone who feels (understandably!) lost in the animal social networks weeds.