Evolution and Art

I believe it was on the first day of this class, that Dr. Fox said something to the effect of:

Evolution affects every subject, with perhaps the exception of art...

After recently finishing a semester of studying art history, I wasn't sure this was true. I wanted to find this link. Last night I found it in the most unlikely place, "The Colbert Report".

Stephen T. Colbert's guest on January 28th 2009, was Dennis Dutton, who says that the appreciation of art has evolved as an evolutionary trait. He has written a book on why art is related to human evolutionary history called "The art of instinct".

You can see the episode on the CTV broadband network, under The Colbert Report.

Natural Selection VS Religion - Response to e-mail

In response to Mike's e-mail:

Thanks for the readings Mike, I will certainly go over them this weekend.

To add another angle to this look at the tense relationship of Darwin and Religion I would suggest some light google searching on some of the legal trails about teaching natural selection in the classroom. 

The classic historical case is the Scopes trial of 1926. Here, high school teacher John Scopes was charged by the State of Tennessee with breaking the "Butler Act"; which made it illegal "to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals". There are many websites that give different slants on the trail. Search "Scopes Monkey Trial" and you can pick what you wish to read.  

There have also been more recent trails using the "bacterial flagellum argument" in place of the 1800s "watchmaker/eye argument" see http://www.newscientist.com/

or watch this very good lecture by Dr. Kenneth R. Miller at Brown University and this more instructional animation of hypothesized and tested steps.

There have also been earlier public arguments like that between T.H. Huxley and Bishop S. Wilburforce at Oxford. I heard a funny recreation at Down House, it went something like this.

Above Pictures: Plaque designating Down House as an English Heritage Site (left); Darwin's gardens (right). Those hundreds of cabbages he mentions in chapter 3, they are still there.

A suggested reading for 02/04/09

As Josh notes, next week's supplementary reading is a very famous and controversial article that drew many responses. I highly recommend this 1996 American Scientist article from architectural historian Robert Mark, critiquing the use of the 'spandrel' metaphor by both Gould & Lewontin and their critic Daniel Dennett.

supplementary reading for 02/04/09

A classic paper from Gould and Lewontin.

Gould, SJ and RC Lewontin. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences 205 (1161):581-598. (available at a lot of places as PDF, here's a copy from University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign)

This paper isn't on the official menu but I think it's a good quasi-contemporary review of the Gould and Lewontin paper (as borrowed from the reading list of the evolutionary biology course I took once upon a time...)

Pigliucci, M and J Kaplan. 2000. The fall and rise of Dr Pangloss: adaptationism and the Spandrels paper 20 years later. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 15 (2):66-70 (pdf available here)

Further thoughts on Chapters III-IV

1. As an ecologist, I'm in total agreement with John Whitfield at Blogging the Origin when he says that reading Chapter III engenders the feeling that there's nothing new under the sun. An old joke in philosophy is that all philosophy is footnotes to Plato. After reading chapter III of the Origin, one could be forgiven for thinking that all ecology is footnotes to Darwin.

2. Chapter IV also has plenty of prescient bits, my personal favorite of which is the passage on p. 113 stating that it has been 'experimentally shown' that diverse mixed plots of grass will be more productive than plots sown with one species. The diversity-productivity relationship has been the subject of intensive recent research, and broadly speaking, Darwin turns out to have been right: more diverse plots are more productive. But the underlying mechanisms have been controversial (at least they were for a time). The main issue is/was how to distinguish between an effect of diversity per se on productivity from the effects of particular species (all else being equal, a more diverse plot is more likely to contain a dominant, highly-productive species). In my own work I've helped develop a solution to this issue. Interestingly, the solution is based on George Price's work on the mathematics of natural selection (see Fox 2005). Briefly, dominance of a mixed plot by a highly productive species turns out to be formally analogous to the increase in frequency of a trait favored by selection. We can use Price's mathematics to factor out this effect, leaving a remainder that isolates the effect of 'diversity' per se on productivity. So this little subfield of research has come full circle: Darwin raised the example of the diversity-productivity relationship because of its implications for his evolutionary ideas; it now turns out that Darwin's evolutionary ideas have implications for understanding the diversity-productivity relationship. Not sure how interesting this is to anyone besides me, but I assume if you've read this far you found it at least mildly interesting... ;-)

3. A historical note related to #2: Darwin doesn't cite the experiment to which he was referring, but my friend and former colleague Andy Hector recently identified it. It turns out to have been, as far as we know, the very first 'ecology' experiment ever conducted, predating Haeckel's coining of the term 'ecology' by several decades. See Hector and Hooper 2002 Science 295:639-640 for this interesting historical nugget.

4. Given Darwin's prescience in so many areas, I was a little disappointed to see that his theory of the origin of species relies so heavily on the principle of divergence of character (i.e. you'll be fitter if your offspring are more variable). It certainly wouldn't have been beyond Darwin to have thought up more modern ideas, such as that widespread species often comprise geographically-separated subpopulations living in different environments and therefore subject to different selection pressures, which will drive them apart in the long run as long as rates of gene flow among subpopulations are sufficiently low. I was expecting to see a clear statement of this idea, and I never did. EDIT: whoops, Darwin does indeed hit on this idea. On pp. 107-108 he refers to subsidence converting a continent into large islands, thereby isolating separate populations of the same species. And then he says "...after physical change of any kind, immigration will be prevented, so that new places in the polity of each island will have to be filled up by modifications of the old inhabitants; and time will be allowed for the varieties in each to become modified and perfected." And of course, this passage is a summary of what has come before. I suppose I missed it because Darwin often intermingles this idea with other distinct but related ideas (e.g., on p. 103, when he talks about the spatial scales on which we should expect to see variation within highly-mobile species like birds vs. less-mobile species).

5. The later parts of chapter IV (pp. 116-130), on the 'tree of life' and the problem of classification, was interesting to me as proposing a solution to a problem that, as modern readers, we don't even recognize as a problem. The Linnean system of classification is hierarchical: species are nested within genera, which are nested within families, etc. What justifies (or maybe better, 'motivates') a hierarchical classification system? After all, there are many non-hierarchical possibilities. One could, for instance, group organisms into 'functional groups' based on their ecological 'roles' (e.g., herbivores, carnivores), and these groups would not be hierarchical but rather overlapping (e.g., some organisms are both herbivorous and carnivorous). I'm sure that various non-hierarchical classifications schemes were proposed at some point in the history of science (anyone know anything about this?). But if all life really does comprise a single branching evolutionary 'tree', that's a strong motivation for choosing a hierarchical classification system which reflects the hierarchical nature of 'tree-like' branching. This gets to philosophical issues regarding 'natural kinds'. Nature is full of variable 'things' that are similar in some respects and different in others. Is there ever a 'natural' way to classify these things, to 'cleave Nature at the joints'? Or is classification merely a human construct, something we do strictly for our own convenience?

supplementary paper for this week

Price, GR. 1995. The Nature of Selection. Journal of Theoretical Biology 175(3):389-396. (pdf here)

At the end of this course I will add in all of these links into the main supplementary readings post down below. Somewhere. Down there.

Tonya's Comments on the Introduction and Chapters I-II

My turn :)

p5) As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive, there is frequently a recurring struggle for existence

This idea of a struggle for existence can mean many things. For instance, it can be an aggressive struggle such as when a food supply diminishes, or it can be a passive struggle (e.g. individuals being killed off by a deadly virus).

Natural selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms...

Does he really have to use the term 'less improved'? Yes, I agree in a certain context they are less improved because they went extinct in a certain situation, but perhaps if the situation would be different then they would be the improved form.

I'm not really liking the subchapter headings posted at the top of each chapter and not above the paragraphs associated with each topic. I guess I am supposed to guess which paragraph goes with each topic (not that it is hard, it is just annoying).

p7) [individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of older cultivated plants and animals] generally differ much more from each other than do individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.

What?! Maybe I am not understanding this correctly but this cannot be true, can it?

Darwin thinks it is absurd that some people thing that every race which breeds true has had a wild prototype (p19) :)
Darwin also believes it is always best to study some special group (p20). Yay beetles!

p26) it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to bring forward one case of the hybrid offspring of two animals clearly distinct being themselves perfectly fertile.

Can anyone please explain this sentence to me?????

p36) Interesting tidbit: the barbarians of Tierra del Fuego would rather eat their old women over their dogs in dismal times. Hmm.

p40) We know nothing about the origin or history of any of our domestic breeds.

Awe Darwin, if only you knew how far we have come.

p42) Facility in preventing crosses is an important element of success in the formation of new races

Prezygotic and postzygotic mating barriers!

Interesting tidbit #2: cats are valued by women and children, not by men.

p52) I was very impressed with Darwins understanding of incipient species and that not all must attain the rank of species but there are a multitude of situations that can occur.

Here, Darwin describes a species as: a set of individuals closely resembling each other

p54) What does he mean when he states "plants low in the scale of organization". This is an odd way of writing about a plant with uncomplicated morphology, if that's what he even means.

p56) ...where many species of a genus have been formed, on an average many are still forming...

Is this an active area of modern research? Very interesting!

p57) ...in large genera the amount of difference between the species is often exceedingly small.

Yes, (with my very limited experience) I would agree with this statement as this is true in Nicrophorus (Silphidae: Coleoptera) which has many species; however, the opposite is not true because in Brychius (Haliplidae: Coleoptera), there are only three species and they are really hard to tell apart.

Introduction and Chapters I-II notations

Some of a host of random notations and questions I had while reading through the first ~60 pages of OTOOS

p3) Naturalists continually refer to external conditions ... as the only possible cause of variation

Is this statement true? Did no one before Darwin publish an explanation for variation that relied on factors intrinsic to organisms?

p6) Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.

From the get-go, Darwin is making it clear that he thinks NS works in concert with other natural phenomena to modify the species of the world. It takes a while to get out of him what he thinks these other natural phenomena are but eventually he talks about them.

p8) But I am strongly inclined to suspect that the most frequent cause of variability may be attributed to the male and female reproductive elements having been affected prior to the act of conception.

Okay, in Chapter I he starts laying down the framework for how he thinks variability in organisms occurs. The problem is that ...this is massively generalistic and begs big questions. The (to use the modern terminology) gametes are affected? By what? By ...the organism's thoughts? By actions of the environment? By use and disuse? The answer here can't be NS because that's not going to affect reproductive elements, NS is only acting on whole organisms, not parts of them.

p11) Nevertheless some slight amount of change may, I think, be attributed to the direct action of the conditions of life -- as, in some cases, increased size from amount of food ...

So the conditions of life cause variation in organisms. Is this limited to that one individual in its life or is this something that becomes inheritable, e.g., an acquired characteristic? I'd say it's not but then a few sentences later...

The great and inherited development of the udders in cows and goats in countries where they are habitually milked ... is another instance of the effect of use. Not a single domestic animal can be named which has not in some country drooping ears; and the view suggested by some authors, that the drooping is due to the disuse of the muscles of the ear ... seems probable.

This is the beginning of a book full of comments that show that Darwin did not have a scientific problem with acquired characteristics; he just didn't think that they alone explained variation. If promoting acquired characteristics makes one a Lamarckist than Darwin is being a Lamarckist in OTOOS. (and I use the term Lamarckist in its general sorta pop-sci understanding of the term. Even wikipedia tells me that's too simplistic but ...just go with it)

p20-29 I won't quote but basically Darwin gives a great litany of well thought-out reasons why domesticated pigeons, even though they show amazing amounts of variation, must be descended from one ancestral species. It's weird reading this in a book full of Darwin deferring to popular opinion at the time that domesticated dogs must have descended from several ancestral species.

p32-42 Darwin is doing the best job he can at explaining out artificial selection as the driving force behind variation in domesticated species. And it's a great job: he establishes that breeders are picking up tiny, minute differences in their animals. He establishes that not all of these animals breed. He makes it certain to explain that breeders don't aim to make a new variety of, say, dog. No one sat down and decided to make a Dalmatian. But breeders picking small changes in generation after generation will eventually produce a new breed of dog. Artificial selection may be intelligently-driven but it does not have directionality, since breeders can't control what the next generation of bred organism will look like. Or, more to the point, breeders can't create novel features, they can merely select for them.

All Darwin has to do now is replace the word "artificial" with "natural" and "breeders" with "nature" and he can convince the reader that NS occurs.

p43) No one supposes that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the very same mould.

This became part of discussion today because the Mayr introduction to this OTOOS publication mentions how Darwin took species away from typological understanding into a population-level understanding. There was a lot said today about this and ...a lot more can easily be said about it. I don't have much to add.

p46) I am inclined to suspect that we see in these polymorphic genera variations in points of structure which are of no service or disservice to the species, and which consequently have not been seized on and rendered definite by natural selection.

Later in the text Darwin will come back to this with his commentary on how one should make phylogenetic trees (although, of course, he doesn't use that terminology.) But, when I read this, I fail to see how Kimuran neutral theory (or at least the first assertation of it) is in anyway contradictory to natural selection. DNA and RNA aren't organismal structures (they literally build strucutres) but if they're not under selection than they can be as neutral as they want to be.

Chapter II is generally a long discussion on how the "What is a species?" discussion will never have any definite winner. To cut to the chase...

p52) From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.

In our modern biological world we could probably argue that species have definite molecular markers and that we could use those to define a "species", but even in that case there might be more unsampled populations out there which actually show a marker that is 'partway' between one defined species and another.

Embracing Darwin's worldview partially means embracing the idea that species are abstracts. In a Darwinian world, species barriers "break down" as we take modern-day populations of organisms and expose them to the fourth dimension. In so doing we see that somewhere the species we are tracing back in time start off as a 'variety' of another species, and that species the same, and so on and so on etc.

four-dimensional populations of organisms that are all more re n

Further thoughts on the Introduction and Chapters I-II

First, apologies to Shari, I only did a so-so job of keeping my mouth shut in class today. I will try to do better at keeping mum in future. Despite that, I do think we had a good discussion which raised a lot of issues that are well worth thinking about. A few further thoughts, in no particular order:

1. Darwin begins his introduction by emphasizing that he's not going off half-cocked--he's thought long and hard about the species problem and isn't being hasty. Clearly, Darwin was concerned with the reception he was going to get.

2. I find it both impressive and amusing that Darwin considered this book an abstract, far too short to include the many facts he'd collected to support his hypothesis. One can easily understand his reasons (see #1), but one can also be glad that he had an editor who recognized that at some point additional facts stop adding weight to the argument and instead end up obscuring it.

3. Interesting, in light of modern arguments about whether some version of creationism can/should be taught in science classes, to see "special creation" treated as a testable scientific hypothesis (and rejected not so much because the facts disprove it, but because of its failure to explain phenomena that Darwin's theory explains). Many scientists today would argue that creationism is not a scientific hypothesis at all, so that it doesn't make sense to talk about evaluating it as such. My own view is that creationism could be (and has been) pitched in both ways. For instance, if a creationist says that the world was created by God to appear as if evolution by natural selection had occurred (e.g., God created fossils in order to fool paleontologists), then that's not really scientific since the "hypothesis" is defined as "whatever's consistent with any conceivable evidence."

3a. There's a connection between #3 and long-standing philosophical issues of evidence and confirmation. Is it always bad for a theory to be consistent with the evidence "by definition"? What if a theory is developed in order to explain certain known facts, as Darwin's theory was? To what extent (if any) do those same facts count as evidence in support of the theory? After all, if the theory was developed in order to explain known facts, it couldn't possibly be inconsistent with those facts, so isn't the theory guaranteed to be "supported" by what's currently known? Put this way, it sounds like previously-known facts shouldn't count as evidence in favor of a theory. But there are many, many cases--The Origin being one example--in which known facts have been interpreted as supporting a theory that was developed to explain them. What justifies this? Is it that Darwin's theory can explain a wide variety of apparently-disparate facts, thereby "unifying" them? Does "unification" count as evidence in favor of a theory? Think of the common phrase "That explains a lot"...

4. Darwin is clearly worried that he can't offer a mechanistic theory of variation and inheritance. But does he really need one? This gets back to the issue of how to establish the domain of a scientific theory--how does one decide exactly what phenomena a given theory should explain/predict/unify? Why couldn't Darwin have said, without apology, "Organisms vary, and offspring tend to (but don't necessarily) exhibit the same variations as their parents. My theory shows how natural selection, acting on heritable variation, can give rise to new species. My theory is silent on where variation comes from in the first place, and why it is inherited. For my purposes, I will simply assume the brute empirical fact of heritable variation, which will hopefully be explained in future by some obscure monk." After all, every scientific theory takes for granted something that is explained by some other theory. For instance, the Modern Synthesis of Darwinian selection with Mendelian genetics takes for granted the underlying molecular and developmental mechanisms that drive transmission and development, and simply deals with the consequences of those mechanisms. At most, it seems to me that Darwin could've just said something about the features that any theory of variation would have to have in order to allow evolution by natural selection to occur (e.g., blending inheritance won't work, because all variation would be quickly eliminated, leaving none for selection to work on).

Darwin's theory of pangenesis

For reference, below is a quote from the 2nd ed. of Darwin's Variation (v. 2, 457), summarizing his theory of pangenesis:

"It is universally admitted that the cells or units of the body increase by self-division or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and that they ultimately become converted into the various tissues and substances of the body. But besides this means of increase I assume that the unites throw off minute granules which are dispersed throughout the whole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply by self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those from which they were originally derived. These granules may be called gemmules. They are collected from all parts of the system to constitute the sexual elements, and their development in the next generation forms a new being; but they are likewise capable of transmission in a dormant state to future generations and may then be developed. Their development depends on their union with other partially developed or nascent cells which precede them in the regular course of growth...Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every unit, not only during the adult state, but during each stage of development of every organism; but not necessarily during the continued existence of the same unit. Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to their aggregation into buds or into the sexual elements. Hence, it is not the reproductive organs or buds which generate new organisms, but the units of which each individual is composed. These assumptions constitute the provisional hypothesis, which I have called Pangenesis."

When reading the Origin, keep in mind that Darwin developed his theory of pangenesis many years after he first developed and published the idea of evolution by natural selection.

Galton conducted blood transfusion experiments to test whether gemmules were carried in the blood. Galton and Darwin corresponded extensively about the design of these experiments and their results. Darwin was clearly reluctant to believe the negative results, and ended up criticizing the experiments in a letter to Nature after the results were published. That Darwin would criticize after the fact experiments that he heartily approved of before they were conducted is widely viewed as a rare instance of Darwin closing his mind to relevant data (and acting like a bit of a jerk).

Also, keep in mind that Mendel himself didn't actually propose an underlying mechanism to explain the statistical patterns of inheritance he observed. The aim of Darwin's theory of pangenesis was to serve as a concrete mechanism that would explain both transmission (inheritance) and development. To our modern eyes, Mendel's data cry out for an explanation in terms of genes on chromosomes--the mechanistic explanation almost seems to jump out of the data themselves. But that's not how things would've appeared to Darwin, had he been aware of Mendel's data. It's hard to say exactly how knowledge of Mendel's work might have affected Darwin's thinking.

Browne, J. 2008

Okay so I just read the Browne paper 'Birthdays to remember' and here are my thoughts:

-it was interesting to read that the idea of natural selection fell out of favour in about 1900 and 1950 due to scientific advancements

-Were 'created kinds' and inheritance of acquired characteristics the only competing hypotheses against natural selection or were there others? The created kinds hypothesis isn't really a biological hypothesis.

-Mayr convinced people that evolution takes place on three levels but what did he think the mechanism of evolution was in 1) molecules and 2) the flow of genes through populations? Of course natural selection but did he also advocate Kimura's 1986 Neutral theory? Because the two are compatible. Guess I will have to read his book next (after LOTR of course).


"Darwinism is a forceful way to express anxieties about the growing power of modern science and the perceived decline of moral values in society". Why is this? One has nothing to do with the other. Darwin was a Christian (maybe?). I think this quote may get at a major reason why Darwinism is so popular/hated? Hidden agendas?

Need to be inspired by the competition?

John Whitfield has started a quicker paced literary jog through OTOOS at Blogging the Origin.

Thomas Levenson has mentioned a larger Darwin project appearing in the near future involving some science / science writing heavyweights: Janet Browne, Sean B. Carroll, Carl Zimmer, Alex Wellerstein and Ellen Bales.

That project is going to kick this project down the stairs.

Copies of OTOOS Online

If you want to save on paper (or currency) there are multiple places on the web to find a free digital copy of OTOOS 1st Ed. Here are some of them:

Project Gutenberg eBook version

A pdf version hosted (and maybe transcribed?) by the University of New South Wales Embryology department

An HTML version hosted by Talk Origins

A text version hosted by Darwin Online

A scanned version hosted by Darwin Online

A PDF of the scanned version, hosted by Darwin Online

Timetable and Additional Readings

Hello Internets,

This blog is being written in conjunction with a course being offered by the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary. What that means is that this is not going to be a slow-paced walk through OTOOS. This will instead be a quick, two-chapter-a-week jog, followed by a few weeks of discussing other papers. Those of us in the course will also have some additional readings, both for general background of the entire text of OTOOS, and also on a week-by-week basis. We'll try to do our best at getting those citations (or links to digital articles) on that week-by-week basis.

Timetable:
Jan 21: Chapters 1-2
Jan 28: Chapters 3-4
Feb 4: Chapters 5-6
Feb 11: Chapters 7-8
Feb 18: Nope
Feb 25: Chapters 9-10
Mar 4: Chapters 11-12
Mar 11: Chapters 13-14
Mar 18: Darwin and the nature of species
Mar 25: The Modern Synthesis and its critics: did Darwin get it right?
Apr 1: Group selection and altruism
Apr 8: Evolution and religion
Apr 15: TBA

General Background Readings:
1) Darwin's Origin of Species: A Biography by Janet Browne. (Available in paperback or hardcover from Amazon)
2) Browne, J. 2008. Birthdays to remember. Nature 456:324-325. (pdf available to Nature subscribers)
3) Bowler, P. J. 2009. Darwin's originality. Science 323 (5911):223-226. (pdf available to Science subscribers/ AAAS members)


Extra Readings (last updated 04-04-09):
Jan 21:
1) Liu, Y. 2005. Darwin and Mendel: who was the pioneer of genetics? Biology Forum / Rivista di Biologia 98 (2):305-322 (pdf available to EBSCO subscribers)

Jan 28:
1) Price, GR. 1995. The Nature of Selection. Journal of Theoretical Biology 175(3):389-396. (pdf here)

Feb 4:
1) Gould, SJ and RC Lewontin. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences 205 (1161):581-598. (pdf available from public domain)

Feb 11:
1) Mallet, J. 2007. Hybrid speciation. Nature 446(7133):279-283. (pdf available to Nature subscribers)

Feb 25:
1) Burchfield, J.D. 1974. Darwin and the dilemma of geological time. Isis 65(3):301-321. (pdf available to JSTOR subscribers)

March 4:
1) Schluter, D. 2009. Evidence for ecological speciation and its alternative. Science 323(5915):737-741 (pdf available to Science/AAAS subscribers)
2) Fitzpatrick, B.M. and M. Turelli. 2006. The geography of mammalian speciation: mixed signals from phylogenies and range maps. Evolution 60(3):601-615 (pdf available to BioOne subscribers)

March 9 (moved forward two days to accomodate some schedules):
1) Dennett, D. C. 1995. Darwin's dangerous idea. Sciences 35(3):34-40 (pdf available to EBSCOhost subscribers here)

Mar 18:
1) Beatty, J. 1986. Speaking of species: Darwin's strategy; pp. 265-283 in D. Kohn (ed.), Darwin's Heritage: A Centenniel Retrospect. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Reprinted as: pp. 227-246 in M. Ereshefsky (ed.) 1992, The Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species. MIT Press, Cambridge. (pdf available at authors' academic website)

Mar 25:
1) Rose, M. R. and T. H. Oakley. 2007. The new biology: beyond the Modern Synthesis. Biology Direct 2:30. (pdf available)
2) Huxley, J. 1942, 1963. Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. Chapter 1 of First Edition, excerpts from the Introduction of Second Edition.

Apr 1:
1) Ruse, M. 1980. Charles Darwin and group selection. Annals of Science 37:615-630. (pdf)
2) Borrello, M. E. 2005. The rise, fall and resurrection of group selection. Endeavour 29 (1):43-47. (pdf)
3) Bowles, S. 2008. Conflict: altruism's midwife. Nature 456 (7220):326-327. (pdf)

Apr 8:
1) Christ and a Bicycle by Andrew Brown. Apparently delivered as part of his advertising or publicity for his book Darwin Wars: The Scientific Battle for the Soul of Man.
2) Charles Darwin on Religion by John Hedley Brooke, an invited contribution to the website for The International Society for Science & Religion
3) Dawkins, R. 1997. Obscurantism to the rescue. The Quarterly Review of Biology 72(4):397-399. (pdf available)
4) portions of "Natural selection not inconsistent with natural theology", by Asa Grey, as published in the Atlantic Monthly in a series of articles for July, August, and October 1860.

Expect updates as more readings come to light.

I like the name "Blogodarwin" it has pizazz.

If no one objects I hope to randomly post photos of Darwin things from London.

Here is Down House, Kent. Where Darwin lived for around 40 years. He did much of his writing of the Origin here.

If you don't think that these pictures have any academic relevance (which they really don't, they are just interesting) and you think I should stop, then just (politely) let me know and I will stop.

Another thing to add.

If anyone is interested in a place to look for readings for discussions or just for some interesting Darwin reads, check out this month's Scientific American. It is mostly articles about Darwin and Natural Selection. The connection to today's modern science is interesting. Availible at a newstand and grocer near you.