Category Archives: Science

Pngarrison helpfully pointed us a day or two ago to a recent article in the context of the randomness of variation. It does raise some interesting issues from The Hump’s perspective. So I’ll very briefly summarise it in the knowledge that it’s open-access, and those with a better background can bypass my meanderings.

A particularly zealous reader may recall that in my recent piece on the fossil record I raised a question, in passing: “…as an exercise, can you say what in Neodarwinian theory precludes a cyclical, rather than linear and branching, evolutionary process?” Despite claims like Koonin’s (2009) that there is no tendency to greater complexity in evolution, the most basic finding of palaeontology is the overall trajectory from simple (if that word means anything in biology) single celled organisms to, well, humans, or at least higher life-forms. Whether one calls it progress or not, what is undeniable is that it is a trajectory, or rather a branching series of trajectories, which … Continue reading →

I’ve not written much about genetically modified organisms in the nearly four years The Hump of the Camel has been in existence. This is partly because, for several years until recently, it was a non-issue in Britain, having been put on the back-burner by public outcry. And it’s partly because, although I’ve been disquieted about its risks myself, a number of benevolent and wise people have supported it.