It has proved to be a difficult endeavor to pin-down specific human universals. Exceptions appear to be the rule. Nonetheless, although the specifics vary, in broad terms it can safely be claimed that humans are universally social, symbolic, and ritualistic. Humans across time and space have and continue to be bound in webs of relationships… Continue reading Back Scratchers
Category: Evolutionary Biology
In the beginning…
The life-cycle of the sea squirt is unique and instructive. As a free-swimming larva it has a three-hundred cell nervous system with sensors, a spinal cord, and an organ of balance which helps it find a suitable location for reproduction. Upon finding such a location, it lodges itself into the sand and proceeds to most… Continue reading In the beginning…
Mind Through Matter
Cognition - the ability to detect, record, and assimilate salient features of environments - is a fundamental feature of all biological agents. It enables organisms to move from a perpetually reactive state to one that is predictive, it decreases surprise and novelty, and its products reduce the demands of physiological and psychological homeostasis. Utilizing the… Continue reading Mind Through Matter
Sand Castles
Termites build mounds, beavers construct dams, bees assemble hives, and spiders weave webs. The drive to build is ubiquitous in the natural world and is an evolved strategy to cope with uncertain, complex, and dangerous habitats. This force, known as niche construction, reduces the environment to manageable and predictable units, shields organisms from known risks,… Continue reading Sand Castles
Death by Dashboards
Due to the glacial pace of evolutionary adaptation in many if not most ways, the genome could be considered a lagging indicator. It is tuned to invariants of a bygone regime - the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). Life would probably be not as robust and diversified if it had to solely rely on a… Continue reading Death by Dashboards
Plastic Brains
To qualify as a licensed London taxi driver, trainees require comprehensive training and testing that typically takes three to four years. Drivers need to commit to memory and learn the mishmashed layout of approximately 25,000 streets, the location of thousands of landmarks, and the quickest way to navigate between any points in the city. In… Continue reading Plastic Brains
The systems above, the (epi)genomes below
In medicine, it is often said the exceptions are the rule and atypical presentations of diseases are typical. However, diagnoses are also often preceded by typical symptoms, accompanied by diseases, and succeeded by other symptoms and diseases. There are patterns in these journeys and they often follow consistent trajectories. A heart attack is announced by… Continue reading The systems above, the (epi)genomes below
Histories
Winston Churchill wrote, “the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.” However, looking backwards is often obscured by time, form, or perspective. Nonetheless, if viewed through a reflective and measured lens, it is clear that like all life on Earth, humans are also a historical species, we carry the markers of… Continue reading Histories
Charnel Grounds
The practice of interment and its associated rituals are features of human symbolism and practiced by most cultures. One unique burial ritual prevalent in ancient and medieval South Asia was the sky burial. These burial sites - termed charnel grounds - were typically found near large river banks or on mountain plateaus. At these sites,… Continue reading Charnel Grounds
The Present of Things Past
As stated in one of Zeno’s nine paradoxes, an arrow in flight is “somewhere” and “somewhere in transit”, implying the flow of time as a continuum. Thereafter, approximately a thousand years after Zeno, the theologian Augustine of Hippo attempted to categorize time by writing, “perhaps it would be exact to say: there are three times -… Continue reading The Present of Things Past
The Single Aim
Evolutionary biologist Leslie Orgel’s second rule of biology states that “evolution is smarter than you are.” Evolution and its mechanisms can explain much of the seemingly boundless complexity and organization evident in biological ecosystems. As I discussed in my last essay, biological evolution with its objective function of survival and reproduction driven by the processes… Continue reading The Single Aim
Problem of the Criterion
In the 1930s, the evolutionary biologist, Sewall Wright, developed the concept of the fitness (adaptive) landscape as a visualization of evolution. The fitness landscape, conceived as a topographic map that resembles a mountain range with peaks and valleys, described different phenotypes of an organism that can vary over a continuous range of genotypes. The vertical… Continue reading Problem of the Criterion
😴💤
The 20th-century evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, said, “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” From the perspective of evolution and its twin fitness functions of survival and reproduction, sleep is a seemingly difficult phenomenon to make sense of and explain. When we are asleep, we cannot gather food, socialize, find a… Continue reading 😴💤
The dose makes the poison…
Stress is defined “as a process of altered biochemical homeostasis produced by psychological, physiological, or environmental stressors.” Etymologically, the word is derived from Latin, meaning “tight, compressed, drawn together.” Conceptually, it can be found in the physical sciences as early as the 17th century. In physics, Hooke’s law (F = -kX) states that the strain… Continue reading The dose makes the poison…
Hormesis
The rise in modern human life expectancy is one of the crowning achievements of the scientific revolution. Throughout the world, life expectancy has increased exponentially over the last two hundred years directly due to technologies such as refrigeration, sewage, clean water, fertilizers, indoor living, antibiotics, and vaccinations. Through these technologies, we began to insulate ourselves… Continue reading Hormesis
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