You sure axolotl questions

So I fell down a google hole for a little personal project I started recently on life forms that can regrow and become rejuvenated after serious injury and loss of parts. It's something I got interested in ages ago through reviewing a James Elwick book which detailed the way regeneration was a topic of fascination for biologists in the 19th Century. Apparently Richard Owen, the founder of the Natural History Museum and head honcho biology man in the UK until a certain mr Darwin came along and dethroned him, was particularly enamoured of the problem of explaining why some creatures could grow new bits to replace ones that fell off, and others could not. For Owen the ability of a lobster to regrow a claw, or a lizard to replace its tail, was a central mystery of life and held the key to understanding not only how life works but how to prolong it. 

Owen's research program fell into disfavour in the late 19th Century because he never got along very well with Darwinism. I still find his explanation for varying regenerative capacity fascinating though. He theorised that in higher life forms, the vital essence had become centralised in the nervous system, especially the brain, which is why higher forms can only reproduce if they're imbued with 'fecundating principle' A.K.A sperm. Simpler creatures have their life force spread out more evenly throughout their bodies, which is why if a fragment breaks off it can simply regrow. I don't know why this appeals to me so much.  

The axolotl is a bit of a poster child for regeneration, because it regrows not only its tail but other limbs and even internal organs.Sea cucumbers get the prize for self-repairing not just comprehensively but rapidly, regrowing lost parts in as little as a week. Hydras outdo their mythological name sake, because any fragment larger than a few hundred epithelial cells that is isolated from the body has the ability to regenerate into a smaller version of the whole. They're also thought to be truly immortal, because they show no processes of senescence -aging.  They can just renew indefinitely. A planarian flatworm can also grow back its entire body from a speck of tissue,

One interesting thing is that there is often a key area or body part that must remain intact, in order for regeneration to be viable. We all know (right?) that an earthworm's future depends on where you split it. But did you know that if you cut it after its 13th segment (counting from the head) then it can regrow its head, but not sexual organs? Whereas cutting it between segments 20 and 21 can create two whole new worms? but cut between the 23rd and 55th segments and you'll end up with no worm at all. Mind you, this is just 'red wrigglers', while 'blackworms' will actually self-amputate in response to temperature shifts. And one unfortunate species can be induced to develop a head at both ends.

Why can't humans regrow limbs and organs? The standard modern line would, I think, be that such regenerative powers in a complex multicellular would be too risky, because it would make cancers more dangerous. But this isn't really a complete explanation. Axolotls are pretty complex after all - why doesn't cancer destroy them? Why do some very complex organisms suffer little or no cancer at all? Variable regenerative power could be a product of inherited constraints, frozen into certain lineages by chance. 

Makes me wonder if there is any cool scifi imagining humans with axolotl-like abilities. Some superheroes have it, sure, but what if everyone did - how would that change society? It wouold affect our attitude towards risk, presumably. And create interesting new possibilities for body modification.

Right i should really get back to work now.............

"Nothing was wrong with his mind"

Blown away by these moving words on mental illness from philosopher justin_garson. Great article. I hope the abyss is kind. 

https://aeon.co/essays/evidence-grows-that-mental-illness-is-more-than-dysfunction 

One day I'll write about my own brushes with mental illness, and the services that were supposed to help. But not today.

The P-Value Podcast

I don't normally get on that well with podcasts, annoyingly. They rarely seem to hold my attention adequately, and my mind starts wandering onto something else while it fades into background noise, then i realise i've missed a bit, but im not sure how much. It's really hard work to keep attending to it properly.

But i've nevertheless been meaning to listen to this one for a while, because it features my close friend and awesome philosopher Rachael Brown, and I had a feeling it would be something special. I was unprepared for quite how *cool* and engaging it is though! 

I love the series on the role of values in science, and I think my students will love it too. I know many people are different from me, and find podcasts easier to attend to than text, so its great when i'm able to offer further resources in a variety of different modalities. 

Rachael is based in Australia, but in the UK at least, academics get little to no formal recognition for creating this sort of resource, which I think is a great shame, because it is hard to carve out time for anything that isn't essential to one's career. All the more reason then to thank Rachael for making this freely available!

Listen here!

https://thep-value.buzzsprout.com/ 

Stats

According to the (basic) blogger stats function, this blog gets a fair number of views. I mean, not that many. Nearly 110k since i started it ten years ago. The interweb seems to think I'd need that many *every month* for it to be commercially viable - ie to generate enough money that I could be a full-time blogger. Luckily I have a job!

But i'm curious about it. I get weird spikes where I'll suddenly get 600 views in a day for no reason that i can discern. And i only very very rarely get comments. So it seems plausible that the views are mostly bots, especially when there are spikes, but i don't really understand how it all works.

I'd love to get more comments from readers. 

So do us a favour: drop a quick line in the comments if you're a human!

My job is insane

As in, you have to be a bit weird to do it, I think. And before you think I'm being ablist, I'm using 'insane' in its reclaimed sense, to mean unusual, non-standard, special, rather than anything perjorative. 

This semester has been relentless.

Paradox in Washington

 I’m travelling to this on Sunday http://www.paradoxoftheorganism.com/

Looking forward to it!

Philosophy for physicists

I teamed up with some colleagues last week to produce a short video promoting philosophy of science to physics undergraduates. All credit to Ben Hanson and Tim Moorsom for the smooth editing!

Facepalm moment for suggesting Descrates was a Medieval Philosopher though. This is why I don't do hps...........

Decree absolute

Well it's been an eventful september. I got the book draft in, by the skin of my teeth. And my divorce just got finalised too. If I can just defeat the kids' headlice once and for all too, I'll have overcome some of the biggest challenges of my life.

Obviously some things are too personal for a blog but I'm always in favour of making visible the struggles that people often endure silently. Suffice to say, it's been bleak, bleaker than I ever imagined a marriage could get. And I wholeheartedly don't recommend anyone try to get divorced and write a book at the same time. Although, in the same way that kicking someone in the shin will distract them from a headache, it might be that each has been a welcome distraction from the other, at times. 

Most important for me is to mark the occasion, the moment, the beginning of a new era. Begin on a fresh page and start the re-build. I'm lucky in many ways. I'm financially solvent, unlike most women in my position. I've got a house, my kids, my cats, a fulfilling career. I'm not saying don't send gin. Definitely send gin. All the gin. Even though it won't mix with my sertraline. The point is, onwards and upwards. Or at least sideways.

Day 359 .............it's in!!!!!

Let me know if you're willing to comment on the draft for me!

Here's the outline:

Day 307: Looking on the bright side

It occurred to me recently that in this 'How to finish a book' series I've tended to write mostly when I'm feeling negative about the work - to berate myself, or create excuses about other stuff I've been busy with, or just defiantly state how far my output has subceeded my plans.  I consciously intended to do a bit of that, at the outset. I like the recent trend of academics talking about all the rejections and failed experiments they've endured, to balance out the normal misleading bias towards only talking about successes. Plus, I think it's important for parents especially to be real about just what they're up against when they try to do more than just wipe stuff up and dispense snacks.

On the other hand, I might have gone too far and given the impression that my book is way behind schedule, that I never get anything done.

Conference season!

 Last week I had a blast at How the Light Gets in, a Philosophy festival in Hay, where I spoke on a panel about scientific expertise and whether we should defer to authorities. I argued that, because of the underdetermination of theory by evidence, the folk do have reason to be skeptical of scientific claims when they can see that the people generating those claims fail to represent them or their values.

This week I'm off to give a talk about the evolution of morality at a conference about science-engaged theology Then at Leeds we've got Frenchfest and in July it's the annual meeting of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science in Exeter.

I'll have to find some gaps to squeeze in some writing somewhere. But damn it's good to be travelling again!!

New ink

I read this beautiful article recently about how a tree's form tells the story of its individual past. Drought years baked in as narrow growth rings. Nuclear tests recorded as radiocarbon spikes. Or cramped growing conditions recorded in straight growth and a narrow canopy. History becomes embedded in tree flesh.

Human bodies pick up signs of life too, of course - the creases around the eyes that tell of tiredness and age, scars and stretch marks that bear witness to some of the changes and injuries we might undergo.  I've been taken by the idea that tattoos give humans a way to take partial control of this narrative, to choose some of the stories that become imprinted on them.

The image I chose was inspired by Ernst Haeckel's line drawings of siphonophores, especially his Porpita prunella.

The blue button resembles a jellyfish, but is actually a chondrophore - a cooperative colony of individual hydroids, each of which have specialised for different functions. For my symbolic purposes, the most important thing about them is their astonishing regenerative capacity. Like all cnidaria, they can survive just about any physical trauma, because if they lose a part, they can just grow it back. They can regrow from small pieces or even collections of separated cells.

I've had to bounce back from some difficult times too recently, and I take great comfort from the thought of these beautiful little creatures, floating delicately along warm ocean currents, ready to regenerate from whatever life throws at them, again and again if need be.

Day 223: Time to get real

So another 65 days passed. And did I 'slay the beast' that I was 'hellbent' on slaying, AKA chapter 3? I did not. 

Reader, I'm ashamed.

Tribal social instincts in Edinburgh

For anyone interested, I'm giving a talk to the Philosophy, Psychology and Informatics Group at the University of Edinburgh tomorrow. 

My title is 'The Evolution of Human Morality'

Abstract:

I will describe the ‘received view’ of how human morality evolved, and especially the influential ‘tribal social instincts hypothesis’. This idea, propounded in 2001 by cultural evolutionists Peter Richerson and Rob Boyd, posits that human morality evolved as an adaptive response to intense conflict between different human social groups. I review the evidence and articulate several criticisms of the hypothesis, as well as discussing possible rivals.  

It will take place Wed. 9 March, 17:10 – 18:30 and you can join remotely using the following zoom link:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/88438665889

 

Meeting ID: 884 3866 5889

Passcode: BNVahZN5

Day 158 Feeling the burn

It's wednesday. I'm having one of those grey, lack-lustre weeks where the sky is full of sleet, my cats have become incontinent, and I'm fighting-off the kind of first-world but endless problems that make you want to crawl under a duvet, with a pint of gin. And I got some disappointing news that means I'm stuck in the first circle-of-hell, domestically speaking, for at least another month.

*But* today I crossed the final 't' of the first half of the chapter I'm working on - the chapter that refuses to die. And I'm hell-bent with gritted teeth on slaying the rest of the beast by the end of next week.

Day 141 Update: pre-birth jitters

 It's been too long since my last progress report. The schedule went a bit off-piste thanks to Christmas, dry January, my standard cognitive chaos. But I haven't been idle, honest guvnor. I've pretty much vanquished chapter 8. 

Which leaves me only two chapters still undrafted. They're the two chapters that I thought would be the easiest, because they rely the most on existing material. Somehow that's made them the hardest instead. I'm not sure if this is because I find it more fun to write newer stuff, or perhaps because the remaining chapters deal with the issues that are most at the heart of all my work so the bar is higher, or what. But i can't avoid them any longer.

What I've started doing is reviewing the overall shape of the beast though. I've got around 73,000 words drafted which feels good. I promised the publisher between 80 and 100 thousand, so it feels like I'm right on track.  Of course, as well as the two remaining chapters, I've got the intro and conclusions still to do, as well as editing and redrafting, references, pictures and index to sort out. There is still plenty to do! 

But I'm close enough to the end now that a new sort of fear is beginning to set in. Not so much, 'Will i get it written?' as 'Will it be any good?' And there is something else too. Reviewing the macroscopic structure of the arguments, its dawned on me that it's turning out slightly, well, different from how I expected. Which is terrifying.

I've often joked that I don't feel entirely in charge when I'm writing. It's a bit like getting possessed by a idea and i don't always know where it will lead. I'm often surprised by the ending.

Is this normal? I have no idea. Many women have compared finishing a book to having a baby - long gestation period, painful birth, celebratory announcement period etc. But of course it doesn't stop there - the child keeps growing and developing (if you're lucky). and parenthood is all about cultivating something autonomous, rather than sculpting clay. 

It's like my work has a life of its own too. And I'm not the only author, because the end product reflects all sorts of things that happened, like things I read, other people's work, as well.

One of the surprises, so far, is that its a lot more philosophical than I thought it would be. This is partly because I set out to respond to philosophical work on my earlier writings but mostly, I'm sure, about people who have influenced me - like my former grad students, Will Morgan and Arthur Carlyle, who inspired me to think loads about really metaphysical issues like personal identity.

It's scary because it feels a bit out of my lane - I'm not a metaphysician! and because I feel much safer talking about real things, describing actual creatures, than in evaluating possible worlds and so on. I guess I'm also worried the abstract stuff gets too dry and will alienate people who'd rather be hearing about colourful and engaging animal life histories. 

Maybe I'll change the balance again in the end - I've been working more at the abstract end of things, but the two remaining chapters will hopefully bring it back to earth. I'll have to consult the muse, next time it's with me. I guess I'm also slightly freaked out because I've ended up writing much more new material than I originally intended to - not just new ways of putting things, but getting into entirely new problems and literatures that I'd never thought about before. Which has made it more fun for me, of course. But now that I'm remembering that my baby is going to have to go out into the world one day, it suddenly feels risky. 

It's not me to be an over-protective parent though. I'm more the type who bungs them into roller-skates and laughs when they fall over. Tells 'em to wipe their muddy hands on their knees and crack on. But then, I've always known, deep inexplicably in my core, that my kids are awesome and will do just fine. My book, on the other hand.......I need to work out what the equivalent is of helicopter authoring. I guess instead of disallowing boyfriends I'd be refusing to let anyone read it.

What I really need, to help with these jitters, is a) to work really hard editing and polishing it up but also b) to find some well-trusted, but also totally qualified people to read bits and beg them not to hold back on criticism, for my own good.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. It's time to reach out to my academic village.......