The Evolution of Cooperation

Here is the text of my article which appears in The Philosophers' Magazine's latest issue, 'The Nature of Life'.


The front door is unfamiliar, just one more chunk of wood among the countless doors that I pass by unthinkingly every day. I hesitate, listen for sounds of life from within, but everything is quiet, and the door yields soundlessly to my touch. It takes a while to find a light switch, but once I do a warm glow illuminates the flat. I potter for a while before settling, perusing the book shelf, scanning the title of the novel by the bed, noting the dubstep on the cd rack, wondering if the fridge will yield milk, or beer, or only mould. ‘This lamp is nice,’ I think, ‘maybe it would suit my own house,’ before showering, lathering my skin with a stranger’s scent, and then climbing into her bed to go to sleep.

On motherhood and viciousness

Mother: serene archetype of blissed-out altruism, right? Selfless, nurturing, loving, she is the graceful heroine of catholic theology, she is the earth, she is nature, the great universal, connecting us all up into one great loved-up family. Right?


I wonder how many fathers, how many mother’s mothers and most of all, how many mothers-in-law would (truthfully) corroborate this picture?  See the thing is, and here I'm going to say the unsayable as only a signed-up member of the said-about can, new mothers aren't in fact very nice at all. We are, at least some of the time, grumpy, irrational, self-important tinder-boxes. In our worst moments, we are paranoid, resentful, hateful, defensive, vicious bitches. Especially to each other, although I'd wager the poor old mothers-in-law come a close second. Any casual glance at mumsnet will confirm this for the uninitiated. Just try typing 'I don't want to breastfeed' into google to see how quickly the mummy trolls come out to play.


My thought for the day is, How come motherhood wields so much power to bring people together, but also to push them apart?

On the eco-evo-devo of cooperation

To explain the origin of any transition, it is necessary to identify some phenotypic change that brings about a new fitness benefit.

Evolvability ascends...

Congratulations to the awesome Rachael Brown for winning this year's Sir Karl Popper Prize for her paper 'What evolvability really is'.

The BJPS editors say that Brown's paper brings "the  technical, scientific and philosophical features of the issue together in a deft and thought-provoking manner" and "represents an important contribution to the foundations of evolutionary biology."

Definitely time for a re-read.........

Brown's paper represents an important contribution to the foundations of evolutionary biology - See more at: http://thebjps.typepad.com/my-blog/2014/11/the-sir-karl-popper-prize-for-2014-.html#sthash.rtuKH8su.dpuf

Brown's paper represents an important contribution to the foundations of evolutionary biology. - See more at: http://thebjps.typepad.com/my-blog/2014/11/the-sir-karl-popper-prize-for-2014-.html#sthash.rtuKH8su.dpuf

Brown's paper represents an important contribution to the foundations of evolutionary biology. - See more at: http://thebjps.typepad.com/my-blog/2014/11/the-sir-karl-popper-prize-for-2014-.html#sthash.rtuKH8su.dpuf

Hangin' out with Jeremy B

I had a great time at UCL STS yesterday, where I argued that some aspects of bacteriological methodology may be holding us back.  Robert Koch's pure culture laboratory techniques were enormously successful, enabling Koch to take the first steps in defeating tuberculosis, cholera and anthrax and paving the way for the Golden Age of microbiology. But the essentialist and reductionist ontology latent in the Kochian Legacy might be now be impeding further progress in defeating chronic infections, developing new antibiotics and getting a handle on the evolutionary significance of lateral gene transfer.

Other urgent questions we discussed on the day were: Is the legal profession imposing unreasonable demands for standardisation on science? Was it really all Koch's fault? Why did Jeremy Bentham wear such odd clothes? Do parents inevitably catch nits when their toddlers have them? Many thanks to Phyllis Illari, Emma Tobin, Jack Stilgoe, Brendan Clarke, Donald Gillies, Joe Cain and everyone else who came.

Sad news

 

It is with much sadness that I note the passing of Prof. Werner Callebaut (1952-2014). He was the jovial stalwart of my former workplace, the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Editor-in-chief of Biological Theory, Philosopher of Biology, Riedl scholar and also rather a lot of fun. He worked tirelessly, but he also gave me a taste for slivovitz that I'll never forget and often had a mischeivous glint in his eye as he regaled an audience with tales of philosophical punch-ups.

He will be widely missed by all the young academics whose early careers he helped to shelter and by the international philosophy of biology community in general.

http://www.kli.ac.at/callebaut

UCL STS Talk

12 Nov
Ellen Clarke (Oxford)

'On the subject of bacteriology'

Tea/Coffee 4pm, talk 4:30

UCL STS London

ToddlerFail

ToddlerCalm^TM: A guide for calmer toddlers and happier parents 

by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, Piatkus 2013.

I shouldn't have bought this book. My amazon app makes it far too easy to impulse buy.  If I'd looked at a big enough picture to have spotted the 'Foreword by Dr Oliver James' on the cover then I wouldn't have gone near it. Doh.

Oxford Philosophy of Biology Reading Group

Our provisional reading list...................

Scifi list

Over at Schwitzsplinters Eric Schwitzgebel has been collecting Philosophers' recommendations of science fiction for the philosophically-minded.

I couldn't resist piping up when I saw how recent most of the other suggestions are- Greg Egan and Ted Chiang came up loads: Ugh!! Modern scifi seems to me to have taken a really technical turn - its become more like science journalism, about showing off how many details about quantum theory can be included, for example, than about actually playing around with parameters of reality.

The oldies are the best I say. I grew up on good solid 1950s scifi, the kind that was printed in fan magazines, where the characters were reassuringly two dimensional. They were desperately sexist and the dialogue often terrible but it didn't matter, because they were all about the ideas. Attitudes to science have changed a lot since then. Technology used to be magical, something that could save us from work, take us around the galaxy and solve all of humanity's problems. Now we've lost that optimism and science has become somewhat elitist, intellectual, on the back foot under attack from the paranoid homeopathic antivaccination brigade. I feel that science fiction has in turn lost its playfulness, its bravado. I hope it comes back one day soon......

Here are my contributions to Eric's blog.....