A few days ago I wrote about scientific thinking as an antidote to intuition. Not just an alternative to it, but something like the opposite of intuition. The intentional, energy-consuming move to a systematic deliberative mode of thought is utterly different from the easy and instantaneous nature of intuition.

As I work on a book that will claim that evolution is easy, I have a parallel task of exploring the reasons we sense that it is hard or even impossible. Some of those influences are the result of efforts by religions to maintain dependence on supernaturalism or to defend ancient sacred writings. Some are the result of antipathy to science itself, framed in terms of culture war.

This blog's name captures my longstanding interest in human nature: humans are apes, and animals, and yet somehow able to create music and gods, and sometimes plays like Hamlet . But what's that strange word at the beginning, 'quintessence'? Here's the context from Hamlet : The word's history suggests that Shakespeare was (as usual) playing games with words and his audience (all quotes from the OED): So, it seems Hamlet is saying

Let's think of places on Earth where scientists have done great big natural "experiments" on evolution.Looking east from near the top of Mount Lemmon, January 2021 Here are some that ought to come to mind (in no particular order other than the first): 1. The Galapagos Islands, with their famous finches and their less-famous tomatoes and all their otherworldly animals, probably belong at the top of the list.

What is a library? If you ask a biologist (especially a molecular biologist) this question, they are likely to ask for clarification. In their work, they are likely to make regular use of two very different kinds of libraries. The first is the kind that we've had for millenia: a collection of books, journals, and media that is ordered and curated by people. These are the OG libraries, with 'book' at the very root of the word.

One of the most effective metaphors for evolutionary change is the image of an exploration of a space, perhaps a map that shows "fitness peaks" or, better, a library of possibilities. The philosopher Daniel Dennett, writing in Darwin's Dangerous Idea , suggested The Library of Mendel as a way of thinking about the total set of possible gene sequences.

I do apologize for this dull cliche, but I know I'm right about this: change is hard. I don't mean that it's hard to adapt after someone or something forces a change on you. That's true too, but it's not my topic here. I'm talking about this: you want to change, or you need to change, or both. You know what the change has to be. Maybe you know what the first step has to be. It's change, and it's hard.