What I've Been Reading

Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist by Robert Trivers.

Robert Trivers is one of those few humans whom I respect immensely. I have learned so much from his work and most importantly, he changed my perspective on many things.

"On another occasion, Bill and I were discussing racial prejudice and the possible biological components thereof, and he said to me, "Bob, once you've learned to think of a herring gull as an equal, the rest is easy." What a welcome approach to the problem, especially from within biology. Bill was down to the level he taught me to be at. We are all living organisms - make discriminatory comments about others at your own risk. In Bill's view, it was always better to try to see the world from the view of the other creature.

One of the Bill's deepest lessons was in how to view other organisms in a way that took into account that very act of viewing has its own effects. This was Heisenberg uncertainty principle applied to biology. 

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No one has bothered, after all these years, to come up with a coherent account of the various conditions under which species prosper and generate new species, or fail and go extinct. This in part because Stephen Gould expropriated the subject for his own uses and set back the development of a science by some twenty years. I am trying to help develop the underlying logic he failed to.