D’Arcy Thompson and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

by Kevin N Laland

Last week I had the privilege of attending the workshop The Conceptual Legacy of “On Growth and Form” held in St Andrews UK, a (late) celebration of the centenary of publication of D’Arcy Thompson’s classic book (1917/1942).1 The meeting, organized by philosophers of biology Alan Love and Sahotra Sarkar, comprised an interesting mix of developmental

Is social transmission a forgotten force in coevolution?

by Rose Thorogood

During the last decade it has become impossible to ignore that social transmission of information occurs across the animal kingdom:1 humans and non-human animals alike learn by observing others. An explosion of studies demonstrate that species as diverse as Drosophila fruit flies to humpback whales either copy the behavior of others, or use it to

United fronts: Unity, organization, and syntheses in the life sciences

by Andrew Buskell

In his book Consilience, E.O. Wilson described science as he saw it: one moving ever closer to shared agreement on theories, principles, concepts, and standards of evidence. For Wilson, the indications that science was unifying were obvious; “disciplinary boundaries within the natural sciences are disappearing, to be replaced by shifting hybrid domains in which consilience