[M]ost treatments of evolution are written in a reductionist manner in which all evolutionary phenomena are reduced to the level of the gene. An attempt is then made to explain the higher-level evolutionary process by “upward” reasoning. This approach invariably fails. Evolution deals with phenotypes of individuals, with populations, with species; it is not “a change in gene frequencies.”
— Ernst Mayr , What Evolution Is

Archive for December, 2007

Conference: Understanding Anticipatory Systems

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

Word of this conference was recently posted on the ROSEN forum:
Mitteleuropa Foundation  
Understanding Anticipatory Systems

Rovereto, April, 10-12 2008
Futures studies (FS) is a broad field that employs a wide variety of techniques, ranging from forecasting to simulation, from planning to trend extrapolation to scenarios. FS is also characterised by many different conceptualisations and formalisations. The focus of this workshop […]

Filed under: Anticipatory Systems, Rosennean Complexity | No Comments »

Did life begin between the sheets…of mica?

Wednesday, December 5th, 2007

From ScienceDaily:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2007) - Life may have begun in the protected spaces inside of layers of the mineral mica, in ancient oceans, according to a new hypothesis.
The hypothesis was developed by Helen Hansma, a research scientist with the University of California, Santa Barbara and a program director at the National Science Foundation. 
The Hansma […]

Filed under: Entailment, Rosennean Complexity, Synthetic Biology | No Comments »