📣SUBMISSION DEADLINE APPROACHING: 📣 28th February Special Issue: Foundations of Internal Conflicts Guest Edited by @martijnschenkel.bsky.social, @arvidagren.bsky.social, @imprintedgene.bsky.social, Nina Wedell and Manus Patten For more info: academic.oup.com/jeb/pages/ca...

Very excited for the upcoming seminars of the of the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN @eseb.bsky.social! Featuring @manishamuna.bsky.social, @mobilepurin.bsky.social, @joealcock.bsky.social, @asherleeks.bsky.social Join the email list here: internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com

It’s hard to imagine In Our Time without Melvyn Bragg, but excited to see what Misha Glenny will do with the greatest radio programme of all time. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

"There is still life in the old dog." Brian Charlesworth on Fisher's Fundamental Theorem in @journal-evo.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/evol...

The answer is Stephen Hawking. 10 points to @kokkonut.bsky.social Anecdote from Jonathan Watt’s Lovelock biography (2024, p. 59).

SUNDAY TRIVIA After injuring himself on a Bunsen burner, James Lovelock (later of Gaia theory fame), was invited to dinner by his doctor. There, he met a baby who he would not see again until they were both elected fellows of the Royal Society in 1974. Who was the baby?

Medawar may have called individuality "a pseudoproblem invented by nature-philosophers to give biology an air of profundity", but here I think we show that there is still much fun to be had.

If you can only visit one place at Harvard, make it the glass flower exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. 4000 models, 847 species. Commissioned by the university for teaching botany and created by the Czech father and son Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka 1887 through 1936.

How and when can internal conflicts tear an individual organism apart? That’s the question at the heart of this new paper. Great thread by lead author @martijnschenkel.bsky.social below.

Starting in 15 minutes!

Great anecdote about the 1980 selfish DNA papers in Nature.

*NEW PAPER* The comparative method is one of the most powerful tools we have. Here, we use comparative oncology to show how it can be applied to evolutionary medicine. Now out in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health. academic.oup.com/emph/arti

Everyone should read the Spandrels paper. But too often it's discussed without context of the other contributions. Esp. Clutton-Brock & Harvey on how the comparative method can be used to test adaptive hypothesis, and Cain’s final critique (which SJG called “tame” compared to the oral remarks).

The Paradox of the Organism in the university news case.edu/news/medicin...

Post-graduate studies, graduate studies, or post-graduation studies? E.B. Ford focusing on what matters in the preface to Ecological Genetics (1964, p. xiv)

Join us for another Internal Conflicts STN seminar tomorrow at 9:00 UTC! Emily Hornett (@bolinabug.bsky.social) and Greg Hurst (@greghurst.bsky.social) will talk about their work on male-killing and sex determination evolution. Zoom info and more: internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/seminars/

Correction: the “you” is, of course, James Lovelock (not Ruse). With thanks to @jdagg.bsky.social for catching it.

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed about Lynn Margulis for a Swedish radio programme. In preparation, I read her festschrift. I knew she had some odd ideas (HIV and AIDS, caterpillars and hybridogenesis), but was still surprised to see that her only contribution to the volume was on 9/11.

An evolutionary biologist and a molecular biologist go to heaven.

E.O. Wilson on how to make a Harvard colleague aware of your existence. From Cora Stuhrmann’s @monoclemind.bsky.social latest paper.

JBS Haldane reacting to Niko Tinbergen’s criticism of his English. Remembered by Aubrey Manning.

Michael Ruse on how the levels of selection debate had turned into a 'neo-scholastic industry'... ... in 1993!

Nice to actually do some reading around the holidays.

For the Swedish speakers, here is me talking about Lynn Margulis on the Swedish Radio’s show Dåliga Råd sverigesradio.se/play/avsnitt...

John Maynard Smith talking to Michael Ruse about Gaia, which JMS had earlier called ”just an evil religion”.

I have to read this!

Richard Lewontin on being raised "not as an evolutionist but as a population geneticist"

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...