Microbe with bizarrely tiny genome may be evolving into a virus | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

My little book on Schrödinger's famous classic 'What Is Life?' is out! Offering the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the book's origins, reception, impact, and legacy, it uncovers Schrödinger's motivations in writing it, and shows how it has shaped our current understanding of the cell

“Traits” are central units of biological analysis—but how should they be individuated, and relative to which ontogenetic frame of reference? In my new paper, I argue that answering this isn’t easy—and matters more than it seems. 📃👇 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #HPBio #evosky #evodevo

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

A few photo moments from the Shanghai and Beijing SAPoLSN 'Cognition Across the Tree of Life' graduate summer school and workshop. Highlights: engaging with extremely sharp students; getting to know some of the other instructors; seeing old friends; Chinese culture; and Shanghainese food!

Very happy to get this in the mail today! Looks nice! 😀📖 #philsci #HPS #hpbio

"Elisabeth S. Vrba, the “Three Musketeers,” and the Expansion of Macroevolutionary Theory"

A wonderful article on work (both old and new) pushing the frontier of memory research.

Here's your chance to download not only my book 'Slime Mould and Philosophy' , but download ALL the books in Cambridge Elements Philosophy of Biology series from the 20th to the 25th of July for FREE! I highly recommend Jan Baedke's (2025) book 'The Organism'. cup.org/4kEgivL #ISHPSSB #philosophy

This year's BSPS at the University of Glasgow was grand. I had a wonderful time with Jordan Theriault; @davidcolaco.bsky.social‬; ‪@phaueis.bsky.social‬; and Patrick McGivern at our symposium (serious Phil of sci pic). @martahalina.bsky.social‬ was missed by all. Up next - the ISH in Porto.

More on C.H. Waddington at the KLI.

More documentation of the wonderful talks at the 43rd Annual Altenberg Workshop at Konrad Lorenz Institute this last week.

More theoretical biology and C.H. Waddington at the KLI. More to come.

Theoretical biology at the KLI.

#HistBio and #HistMed people: You can still send your abstracts for FoGeL 2025! 🐋🌱

Highly recommend!

Upcoming Boston Colloquium for Philosophy of Science: Decentering the Human in Human Sciences on Friday, May 2nd and Saturday, May 3rd. Free and open to the public. Speakers include @martahalina.bsky.social & @grantramsey.bsky.social #philsci www.bu.edu/cphs/colloqu...

Join us Monday at 4pm (CET) for our next Reading Group session! 📖🧠 We’ll be discussing "Biological Mistakes: What They Are and What They Mean for the Experimental Biologist" by David Oderberg et al., published in @thebjps.bsky.social. Just email jan.baedke[at]rub.de for the meeting details! #HPBio

My new paper examining how plasticity may have shaped the evolution of cellular differentiation is out! We propose that the plastic development of somatic-like cells may have been an intermediate step in the evolution of soma in the volvocine algae. #evosky #mevosky doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

A very well argued and thought provoking blogpost by @wiringthebrain.bsky.social www.wiringthebrain.com/2025/01/euge...

Last Friday, I had a lot of fun presenting my joint work with @philosobio.bsky.social on basal cognition research at UPV/EHU. Thanks a lot to @ias-research.bsky.social for the invitation! The recording is available here: youtu.be/GTzaRhwilIM?... 📃👇 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #cogsky

Pretty excited by this new addition to the bookshelf... Which you can add to your own bookshelf here: www.amazon.com/Drive-Surviv... Or download for *free* here: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Anybody interested in a deeper dive into our 'Evolution Evolving' book may like to watch this 1-hr panel discussion and Q&A conducted by @drlynnchiu.bsky.social with the authors. Relationship to EES, process thinking, maths modeling approaches and more are discussed www.youtube.com/watch?v=dd2M...

A new report just released by the CFI explores the growing role of AI companions in healthcare and mental wellbeing. Co-authored by Dr Tomasz Hollanek and Dr Aisha Sobey the report outlines opportunities, risks and policy implications.

Indispensable, information rich talk from @kevinlala.bsky.social . Should be watched by anyone doing #genetics, #evolution, or race studies. Maybe I’ll share some thoughts later. #sts #philbio #hps underline.io/lecture/1051...

Do large language models develop "emergent" models of the world? My latest Substack posts explore this claim and more generally the nature of "world models": LLMs and World Models, Part 1: aiguide.substack.com/p/llms-and-w... LLMs and World Models, Part 2: aiguide.substack.com/p/llms-and-w...

Although I was not given funding to publish this OA, if anyone (or any one that you know) would like a pdf of the book, shoot me a message. I'd be more than happy to send it your way. www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Is basal cognition research on the right track? Drawing parallels with the #evo-devo approach to the #evolution of development, @philosobio.bsky.social & I argue in our new 📝 that it exhibits both promise & potential hurdles in studying cognitive evolution👇 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci

Fresh off the press: I'm absolutely thrilled to share this paper that I had the honour of developing and co-authoring with the excellent Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Today's evolutionary #robotics lecture: physics engines. youtu.be/Tdv098MQMmc

Ever wondered what diseases are? 🤔 A Domino Theory of Disease is now forthcoming @philscijournal.bsky.social - preprint here! philpapers.org/rec/FAGADT #philsky #philsci

Moss decorated with a bright orange slime mold. Northwest Territories, Canada. #moss #bryophyte #slimemould #fungifriends

There's a great interview of Tobias Uller and Scott Gilbert about our new 'Evolution Evolving' book on the latest episode of the Big Biology podcast. You can listen to it here: bigbiology.substack.com/p/devo-lutio... #science #evolution #evo-devo #plasticity #microbiome

I am beyond excited to announce the imminent arrival of my book. Operationism in Psychology. An Epistemology of Exploration: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo... Brief chapter summaries below (1/10)

For those who haven't downloaded the book yet, or those who missed my first post: there are 6 days left to download Slime Mould and Philosophy for free — HERE bit.ly/4gcxE0z

Delighted to share our new preprint on the cell biology and genome of Stentor pyriformis, a giant ciliate that maintains Chlorella endosymbionts in surface-associated microtubule baskets. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Reading this, that I saw @philosobio.bsky.social tweet, at the same time that I read @wiringthebrain.bsky.social's Free Agents, just to make my brain explode academic.oup.com/jeb/advance-...

Midweek reading link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007...

My new book, Slime Mould and Philosophy, is now available — and for the next month, you can download it for FREE here: doi.org/10.1017/9781... Thanks to everyone who made this book come to life and shared the rather intense journey with me. Enjoy!

Mazviita Chirimuuta (University of Edinburgh) followed with a wonderful talk on 'Basal cognition, Aristotle, and the case for medium independence', focusing on energy efficient constraints over computational architectures and progress in neuromorphic computing more generally 🔋

Will read

How do we judge whether a particular experiment is 'pursuitworthy'? What factors need to be considered? @ennofischer.bsky.social & I are receiving submissions exploring these & related questions for a topical collection in EJPS! Please help us spread the word! tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/iph... #philsci

We had such a great time at our workshop last Thursday and Friday! How great to host amazing speakers like @fabribald.bsky.social, @segundo-ortin.bsky.social (sadly only digitally), @philosobio.bsky.social and @abigailnd.bsky.social, as well as several others (not yet present on Bluesky)! 🤩 #HPBio

@jonathannajenson.bsky.social and I will discuss @thehessam.bsky.social's work in the next session of our International Memory Reading Group

This very helpful paper on molecular and synaptic models of memory by ‪@davidcolaco.bsky.social‬ has finally been published. Highly recommended.

How can a single cell learn without a brain or nervous system? We explore this in our new preprint with @wallaceucsf.bsky.social! We discovered that central features of learning in single cells can be accounted for by a model based on receptor inactivation bit.ly/3CDukfS 🧵 1/n

A (provocative) new chapter. If "cognition all the way down" holds up when things go right with capacities like perception, learning, memory, etc., it should also apply when things go awry. What could taking the idea of scale-free psychiatry seriously teach us about our own cognitive (dys)function?