With the holiday season in full swing, this this how to cut your round Christmas cake on scientific principles. Courtesy of Francis Galton, in Nature Dec 20, 1906.

The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict is now out! Get your copy directly from @harvardpress.bsky.social

Thank you all for coming! There is a temporary promo code from HUP for 30% off.

"Only illiterate Anglo-Saxons have to get their dialectics from Marx and Engels" as Mayr told John Maynard Smith. Mayr had read Hegel.

Join us on Tuesday!

Join us on Tuesday!

Join me Tuesday with authors J. Arvid Agren and Manus M. Patten for the launch of their book The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict.

Not a bad group of people to read your draft.

Join our online seminar on December 16, 2025, at 16:00 UTC to celebrate the book release "The Paradox of the Organism". More info: https://internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/ #conference

Two English evolution popularisers and their chimps.

Bob May on time and space and stories about Oxford.

Michael Ruse on being both a holist and a reductionist.

Maybe meiosis could be employed in democracies, somehow? Ågren, J.A., Haig, D., & McCoy, D.E. 2022. Meiosis solved the problem of gerrymandering. Journal of Genetics 101:38. doi.org/10.1007/s120...

Thank you for all the replies! The answer is George Williams. This is the full quote

Thursday trivia: Who did Niles Eldredge call the “most important thinker in evolutionary biology in the United States since the 1959 Darwin centennial”?

"This idea looks fair to be for twentieth century evolution what phlogiston was for chemistry in another day" Turner reviews Bruce Wallace's "Genetic Load: Its Biological and Conceptual Aspects" (1970) in Nature.

When the journal Theoretical Population Biology was founded in 1970, it was reviewed in Nature by J.R.G. Turner.

*SAVE THE DATE* On Tuesday December 16 at 11am Eastern we will have virtual book launch of The Paradox of the Organism. It will be hosted by the great @athenaaktipis.bsky.social. Please join! Zoom link here: internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/

Got my copy in the mail today! Looking forward to (finally) reading the actual book 🥳

E.B. Ford on how T.H. Morgan’s The Physical Basis of Heredity almost made him lose interest in genetics.

Crick — An @economist.com best book of the year. Congrats @matthewcobb.bsky.social!

Sometimes online supplementary materials feel overly long and poorly edited. Still, quite glad that we no longer have to purchase them from the British Library Document Supply Centre in Weatherby, West Yorkshire. From Alan Grafen's "The phylogenetic regression" (Phil Trans, 1989)

Fun episode BBC In Our Time episode from 1999 with John Maynard Smith. Talks about the major transitions, the gene's-eye view, and why he's bored with human genome project. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

Fun to see this Dawkins-Noble debate resurface. Watching it provides a window into how some debates in evolutionary biology play out. A few impressions below (1/n)

Fireside Books in Chagrin Falls, OH. @maxjtelford.bsky.social and @matthewcobb.bsky.social in good company.

Dan Dennett on the spandrels paper as "the latest chapter of Postpositivist Harvard Conservatism".

Dan Dennett on what Michael Dummett and Richard Dawkins learned from his Locke Lectures.

Working on the molecular mechanisms of selfish genetic elements? Check out this EMBO meeting in Bern, Switzerland! Wish I could have joined, programme looks fantastic. February 8-11, 2026. meetings.embo.org/event/26-sel...

Please consider submitting a paper! Deadline: 28th February 2026

Bill Hamilton on not worrying too much about the all the progress in molecular genetics. Narrow Roads Vol I, p. 12

Arthur Cain once said of David Lack that he was ”the only religious man I knew at that period who did not allow his religion to dictate his view of natural selection”.

Wonderful talks and discussion from @jenncoughlan.bsky.social and @ecmoore.bsky.social y.social! If you missed it, the recording will soon be available at internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/ Pencil in December 16 for the last seminar of the year.

One more day to go! 10am Eastern Thursday November 13. internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/

Three generations of Oxford zoologists grappling with the theological implications of evolutionary biology.

Great days in Kansas for the internal conflicts in biology and economics workshop. Thanks to all the speakers! collectiveagents.weebly.com

First copy of The Paradox of the Organism in the wild!

Speciation special with @jenncoughlan.bsky.social and @ecmoore.bsky.social! Thursday November 13.

Very excited for the arrival of Oren Harman’s latest book. Few combine deep knowledge of the history of biology with such compelling writing.

New paper out with Manus Patten and @arvidagren.bsky.social in Biology & Philosophy! We propose a framework to capture the severity of different types of internal conflict and how this allows for a quantitative approach to evolutionary individuality across different biological collectives.

*NEW PAPER* How much of a threat are within-organism conflicts, really? In Biology & Philosophy, @martijnschenkel.bsky.social, Manus Patten, and I present a mathematical framework to measure evolutionary individuality in the face of internal conflicts. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

John Maynard Smith and Richard Lewontin at the University of Sussex, 9 March 1972.

The legend of this 1905 Vanity Fair caricature of Ray Lankester reads: “His religion is the worship of all sorts of winged and finny freaks.” The @evornithology.bsky.social of his time.

Desmond Morris came late to football, but his interest seems to to be genuine. The current edition of his The Soccer Tribe comes with a (rather bland) foreword by none other than The Special One, José Mourinho.

Here is the message from JEB managing editor Nicki Cook.

Working any sort of within-organism conflict? Submit a paper to our special issue in @jevbio.bsky.social!

David Lack gets a job in radar research during World War II.

The answer is John Krebs, then newly minted Baron Krebs of Wytham and crossbench member of the House of Lords.

Friday trivia: On the eve of Tony Blair’s resignation in 2007, which evolutionary biologist did incoming prime minister Gordon Brown phone to offer the job of Science Minister in the new government? The person turned it down, which they now regret.

Correction: seminar is today at 9am Eastern.

Theodosius Juan Dobzhansky. Great anecdote from @jowiph.bsky.social!