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Greg Priest

@gregpriest.bsky.social

6.9K followers 3K following 1.8K posts

PhD in history and philosophy of science (also JD and MLA), Stanford. Biology, complexity, diagramming. Philosophy of history. Curates these BlueSky feeds: History and Philosophy of Biology Complexity Science Philosophy of History and Historiography

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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3h

Of course. The claim is not that the intelligence exhibited by an earthworm is identical to the intelligence exhibited by a human. It is merely that earthworms have intelligence. And, more generally, that intelligence is more widely distributed across the tree of life than is often credited.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3h

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published OTD in 1979.

Douglas Adams: “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

#litsci 🐡 #BookSky

Cover of first edition of the book

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 1d

If we believe, as I do, that human intelligence is an evolved attribute,
what do we imagine to be so special about the human lineage that all intelligent behavior is likely to have evolved only in that lineage?

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 1d

He actually analyzed evolved behaviors that involved no intelligence in extensive detail. He was also insistent, in my view correctly, that a lot of animal behavior exhibits intelligence.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 2d

OTD in 1881, Charles Darwin published his last book, on earthworms.

It reflected a long interest in animal minds: “One alternative alone is left, namely, that worms, although standing low in the scale of organization, possess some degree of intelligence.”

🧪 🌱🐋🦋🦫 #HistSTM #philsci #pschsky #cogsci

Caricature by Edward Linley Sambourne from Punch in 1882 titled “Man is but a Worm,” depicting human evolution, commencing with Chaos, through worm, monkey, culminating in Darwin himself.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

And I’m not sure about “no new functions” being added. Sure, no new *genes* are being added, but there’s no reason that I know of why changes in gene regulation cannot result in new functions. Maybe not in this case, which seems to be the modification of an existing function, but in principle.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

You’re probably right. And Lamarck didn’t understand how genes work, but nobody did at the time. But his idea that there are many different pathways by which traits can be inherited—rather than just one—seems to have been vindicated by this and lots of other recent work.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

Well, is that exactly right? Something like histone modification acts on existing genes, but the micro-RNAs here are not modifications of existing genes. They are *products* of genes, but only in the sense that all phenotypic traits—from bodily structures to behaviors—are gene products.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

If I remember my Lakoff aright, he’d be happy enough with the claim that all expression is ineluctably poetic, at least if we see a grounding of meaning in metaphor as “poetic.”

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

Fair enough. Is *every* medium of expression poetic, then? Isn’t it in the nature of expression that it will take the form of an interconnected structure of abstract ideas and images, characterized by rules and aesthetic pleasure for at least some people?

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

Not disagreeing—just curious. Are the formalisms poetry, in your view? Is a Heisenberg matrix poetic? A Schrödinger wave function? Or is somehow the rendering of the math in visual form the essentially poetic act?

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 3d

Niels Bohr was born on this day in 1885.

“When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.”

🧪 🦋🦫 #histSTM #philsci #PhilSky

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 4d

A new study claims that male mice who exercise pass micro-RNAs to their offspring through their sperm that increases the aerobic capacity of the offspring.

The claim is of epigenetic inheritance of a phenotype from the male parent.

#EvoBio 🌱🐋🦋🦫🧪

Well-exercised male mice appear to pass fitness to their male offspring

Surprising epigenetic effect relies on snippets of RNA packaged within sperm

www.science.org

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 6d

It’s National Poetry Day (UK). What are your favorite poetic openings?

#Poetry #BookSkyn

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

On the far-away island of Sala-ma-Sond,
Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
A nice little pond. It was clean. It was neat.
The water was warm. There was plenty to eat.
The turtles had everything turtles might need.
And they were all happy. Quite happy indeed.

They were... untill Yertle, the king of them all,
Decided the kingdom he ruled was too small.
"I'm ruler", said Yertle, "of all that I see.
But I don't see enough. That's the trouble with me.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 10d

OTD in 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

#polisky

Marshall with his family at his swearing in. Photographer unknown.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 10d

OTD in 1836, HMS Beagle docked at Falmouth, after a 5 year voyage.

Charles Darwin wrote in his diary, “To my surprise and shame, I confess the first sight of the shores of England inspired me with no warmer feelings, than if it had been a miserable Portuguese settlement.”

🌱🐋🧪#HistSTM #STS

Watercolor of HMS Beagle at anchor by Owen Stanley.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 14d

OTD in 1838, Charles Darwin read Malthus’s Principles of Population “for amusement.”

The idea of a “war of nature” was venerable, but D realized that such a war would tend to remove deleterious variations from populations. Natural selection would necessarily follow.

🌱🐋🧪#HistSTM #philsci 📈📉#evolbio

Cartoon of Darwin holding a copy of the Original, looking into a mirror and seeing as his reflection Malthus holding a copy off his Essay on the Principle of Population. By Tom Dunne for American Scientist.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 16d

L: Color print magazine advertisement for Pennsalt DDT products. This ad appeared in Time Magazine, June 30, 1947. Science History Institute.

R: Photo of children being spayed with DDT in a public swimming pool. Date and photographer unknown.

🌱🐋 # HistSTM 🧪🌎 #philsci #philsky #WomeninSTEM

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 16d

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published OTD in 1962.

“[W]e have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”

🌱🐋 # HistSTM 🧪🌎 #philsci #philsky #WomeninSTEM

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 17d

Thomas Hunt Morgan was born OTD in 1866.

If you're ever feeling that your work is uending and unedifying, remember that he once said this: "Two years work wasted, I have been breeding those flies for all that time and I've got nothing out of it."

🌱🐋🧪 #HistSTM

Photograph of Morgan's Fly Room at Columbia University, around 1920. American Philosophical Society.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 21d

Lovely. I know of Allen, of course. I didn’t know that he called Gould Jay. Was that a commonly used nickname for him, do you know?

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 23d

“We must therefore try to establish a new standpoint which … takes account of organic wholeness, but … treats it in a manner which admits of scientific investigation.”

🐋🌱🦫🦋 #HistSTM #PhilSci #evolbio #STS 🧪

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 23d

Ludwig von Bertalanffy—the architect of “General System Theory”—was born OTD in 1901.

Mechanism “provides us with no grasp of … organic 'wholeness,’ … of organic 'teleology,’ or of the historical character of organisms.…”

🌱🐋🦫🦋 #HistSTM #PhilSci #evolbio #STS 🧪

Cover of General System Theory.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 23d

Ludwig von Bertalanffy—the architect of “General System Theory”—was born OTD in 1901.

Mechanism “provides us with no grasp of … organic 'wholeness,’ … of organic 'teleology,’ or of the historical character of organisms.…”

🌱🐋🦫🦋 #HistSTM #PhilSci #evolbio #STS 🧪

Cover of General System Theory.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 24d

Samuel Johnson was born OTD in 1709.

Selecting one quote from my notes was a challenge, but here goes: “Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.”

#PhilSky

Caricature by David Levine for the New York Review of Books.

Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 28d

Great book!