Welcome to the club, Chris Mooney…

Chris Mooney is the author of the excellent book, The Republican War on Science. He examines big hot-button scientific issues of the day such as global warming, stem cell research, and, of course, evolution. It’s a polemic, to be sure, but a well-researched one. Over the past couple weeks I’ve been meaning to write a post here to let readers know that it has just come out in paperback, with some great updates since the hardback. But it’s been hard enough for me to find time to blog, period, and it seemed like Mooney was enjoying a good reception without the little help I might offer.

Continue reading “Mooney Gets the Treatment” →

Before 1833 there were no scientists.

It was in that year that William Whewell, a British philosopher, geologist, and all-around bright bulb, coined the word scientist. His mentor, the poet Samuel Coleridge, thought the English language needed a term for someone who studied the natural world but who did not inhabit the lofty heights of philosophy (like Coleridge).

There are plenty of people who lived before 1833 that most of us would call scientists–Isaac Newton, Antoine Lavoisier, Edmund Halley, Carol Linnaeus to name just a few. But the word would have been meaningless to them. 

Continue reading “Lightning, the Mind, and a World Before Scientists” →

The comment thread over on my recent creationist-critique post has been very lively. A second creationist has joined in the fray, and I’ve posted a response. 

Originally published September 8, 2006. Copyright 2006 Carl Zimmer.

This female praying mantis is finishing up the last tasty bits of the male that just mated with her. In the lead article in tomorrow’s science section of the New York Times, I talk to scientists who study females of some species that sometimes devour their mates. Sexual cannibalism is not common, but it is revealing. The evolutionary forces that shape the sexes can drive them into some extreme conflicts, even turning one sex into a meal for the other. In some cases, males actually become partners in their own demise–passively or complicitly. A new study indicates that male praying mantises are not so willing. They can tell when females are hungry, and they take extra precautions.

Continue reading “Sexual Cannibals in Gould’s Shadow” →

Before I moved the Loom to this address earlier this year, I got a fair amount of comments on my blogs about evolution from creationists. (See this entry, for example.) They fell off after the move, but now they’re back in fine form. Today we are joined by Kevin Anderson, editor-in-chief of the Creation Research Society Quarterly.

Here’s a little background: last week I wrote here about stumbling across a radio show put out by the Institute of Creation Research. It claimed that recent research on the human genome supports Young Earth creationism. Dr. Anderson spoke on the program about how sickle-cell anemia and lactose tolerance, and other genetic changes in human populations have nothing to do with evolution but are just the result of original sin.

Continue reading “Original Sin Genomics” →