Do you know who George Williams is? If you don’t, let me introduce you to one of the most influential evolutionary biologists ever to ponder natural selection. If you do know who he is, you may still be interested in my article in this week’s Science about a symposium that was recently held in Williams’s honor. Scientists studying everything from pregnancy to economic decision making explained how Williams’s remarkably clear thinking about the nature of adaptation helped them in their research.
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It’s strange enough hearing yourself talking on the radio. It’s stranger still to see a transcript someone makes of you talking on the radio. Recently I was interviewed about Soul Made Flesh on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s show “All in the Mind.” Instead of an audio archive, ABC has posted a transcript of the show. While I can’t claim I spoke in perfect paragraphs, we had an interesting talk about how the brain became the center of our existence.
I was asked a couple weeks ago to contribute a piece to a special series of articles in Newsweek about the future of Wi-Fi. I must admit that a fair amount of the stuff that’s on the Wi-Fi horizon seems a little banal to me. It’s nice to know that I will be able to swallow a camera-pill that will wirelessly send pictures of my bowels to my doctor, but it hardly cries out paradigm shift. On the other hand, I’ve been deeply intrigued and a little disturbed by the possibility that the next digital device to go Wi-Fi is the human brain. Here’s my short essay on the subject.
Science, May 28, 2004
STONY BROOK, NEW YORK—On a recent sunny Saturday, scientists from the United States, Canada, and Europe gathered at the State University of New York (SUNY), Stony Brook, to talk about their research. A geneticist from Harvard University spoke about preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition during pregnancy. An ichthyologist described the loyalty—or lack thereof—that male fish show to the mothers of their offspring. Psychologists discussed economic decision-making. A psychiatrist reviewed some of the genes associated with clinical depression.
Continue reading “Stretching the Limits of Evolutionary Biology”
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