Discovering Darwin

In this final episode of Season 5, Sarah, Mark, and James discuss the last chapters from Lucy Cooke's book Bitch: On the female of the species.  Sarah described the sex lives of barnacles and encouraged us to watch the Green Porno episode that illustrates the impressive size of a barnacle penis.  Image from https://bodegahead.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-long-reach.html The conversation c...

In this episode Sarah, Mark and James continue their discussion of the book Bitch by Lucy Cooke where they explore menopause in humans and non-human animals and discuss those animals that have forwent males when they reproduce. The first conversation explored how orcas are an unusual mammal in that the males do not disperse from their mother's pod, but instead they retain a close relationship with...

  In this episode Sarah, Mark, and James continue their coverage Bitch by Lucy Cooke. We discussed systems where female aggression was common and the subjugation of other females and males was done by "alpha" females.  We were surprised to learn how murderous and violent naked mole rats and sweet little meercats could be.  Photo from Akron Zoo Naked mole rats are eusocial mammals wh...

We continue our discussion of Lucy Cooke's book entitled  Bitch: On the female of the species focusing on chapters 5 & 6 which covered variation in female genitalia, the evolution of the human penis,  and maternal care. We spent some time talking about the baculum, a bone that is found in the penis of many mammals, but not in humans. Sarah described how intricately shaped the ba...

  In this episode we continue our conversation based upon Chapters 3 & 4 of Lucy Cooke's book Bitch: on the female of the species . We started off the conversation doing a deep dive on the famous Bateman experiment  that purported to reveal 3 principles concerning variation in male and female reproductive success and how those differences drive sexual selection. After reviewing the e...

We have returned from a long hiatus to discuss a wonderful book entitled  Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke. Sarah asked James and Mark to read this book that gives an updated look at Darwin's original model of sexual selection, a topic we covered extensively in Season 4. In this episode we cover the introduction and first 2 chapters of the book. In our conversation about...

In this final episode of Season 4, Mark, Sarah, and James finally critiqued Darwin's analysis of secondary sexual characteristics in humans and his clumsy attempt to apply his model of sexual selection in explaining the diversity of forms in what Darwin called "races" and we call geographically distinct phenotypes (GDPs). We found that Chapters 19 & 20 of Descent of Man distilled and concentra...

  After a long COVID induced hiatus, we have returned to tackle the meaty middle of Charles Darwin's magnum opus The Descent of Man . It was actually most of Volume 2, three hundred and nineteen pages of anecdotes, observations, wild conjecture, and chuck'splaining his crazy system of inheritance. The dense plodding Victorian prose was diluted, a bit, by the amazing woodcut prints of beetles,...

  In this episode we dive into Chapter 8 from Darwin's Descent of Man. James incorrectly attributed this chapter to the end of Volume I of the two volume set but it is actually the first chapter of Volume II, which makes more sense given its dramatic shift in focus and topic. Sarah tried to get us to differentiate between adaptive traits that come about from sexual selection with those that c...

  image from:https://www.artsales.com/ARTistory/angelic_journey/index.html In this bonus episode we return to our conversation with our favorite ex-monk philosopher friend Dr. Jack Furlong where he discusses whether angels, as described in scripture, could actually be moral.  We then briefly discuss the Yale baby lab where clever behavioral experiments are done on human babies to see how...

 In this episode we finally confront Chapter 7 of Descent of Man ,  entitled On the Races of Man. In this  chapter Darwin discusses the races of humans and outlines the scientific arguments of the time that questioned if humans are more than one species.  These arguments, of course, were based upon racist European views of the people from the lands their countries had colonized...

Mark, Sarah, and James discuss Chapter 6 of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man . In this chapter Darwin unequivocally declares humans evolved from ancestral primate stock and that event occurred in Africa. We discussed how prescient Darwin was in interpreting the biology and scant fossil record in determining human relationship in the evolutionary tree.  (Image credit: Nick Hobgood/Wikimedia Com...

In this episode we enlist a different Furlong, Dr. Jack Furlong, to help us untangle morality and determine if there really is such a thing as big M morality, as Sarah calls it. <spoiler alert>  Jack, after a very in depth explanation, says "No".  Jack invokes the classic Trolley thought experiment to illustrate why various historical positions on morality stumble when confronted w...

In Chapter 4 Darwin begins to sketch out his views on how complicated human behaviors, like sacrifice, empathy for others, and group defense would evolve when selection would favor us to act otherwise. Chapter 4 is entitled Comparison of the Mental Powers of Man and the Lower Animals - continued , but the short title at the top of the page is Moral Sense , which suggests what Darwin really thinks...

  In this episode we discuss Chapter 3: The Mind from Darwin's Descent of Man. We are joined by a very special guest - Dr. Ellen Furlong  from Illinois Wesleyan University who studies cognition in dogs. In this chapter Darwin spends some time going through a litany of traits that he associates with intelligence. His goal is to get the reader to recognize that humans, although very intell...

  In this episode we discuss Chapter 1 of Descent of Man and are joined by a special guest - Evolutionary developmental (EvoDevo) biologist Dr. Belinda Sly. Darwin spends the chapter documenting how human bodies show the scars from evolution past. Darwin takes two approaches in convincing the reader that humans are modified from "lower forms". In one approach he discusses how humans share ail...

  https://commons.wikimedia.org/ This is the first episode of Season 4 where we begin our exploration of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex which was published in 1871. In this episode we explore how Darwin finally got around to discussing the evolution of humans, a topic he avoided in Origin of Species  even though he told Alfred Wallace it was "...th...

  By Photographer unidentified - MS Am 1092 (1185), Houghton Library, Harvard University, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34246605 In this final episode of Season 3 we actually do not talk about Darwin, but instead focus our attention to William James, a medical doctor, early psychologist, and philosopher who wrote about emotions about 20 years after Charles Dar...

  modified image from Bridgeman Art Library Mark, Sarah, and James discuss the last technical chapter of Charles Darwin's The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals , Chapter XIII:  Self Attention, Shame, Shyness, Modesty: Blushing. Mark Jackson's graduate research was on shame and guilt and he explained to us the difference between shame, guilt, embarrassment, and humiliation (a conc...

  We discuss Chapter XII of the text The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In this chapter Darwin explores the expressions we associate with surprise, fear, terror, horror, and anxiety. The stereotypical expression of fear, as represented by the image above from the 1950's horror film franchises,  has both a physiological function and a signal function. We discuss the v...

  Billy Idol and his trademark sneer In this episode of Mark, Sarah, and James discuss Chapter XI from Darwin's text The Expression and Emotions in Man and Animals , 3rd edition. Sarah noted that this chapter was a potpourri of emotions, including: Scorn, Disdain, Contempt, Disgust, Jealousy, Envy, Avarice, Revenge, Suspicion, Deceit, Slyness, Guilt, Vanity, Conceit, Ambition, Pride, Humility...

  Detail from Truth Coming Out of Her Well to Shame Mankind Jean Leon Gerome 1896 In this episode we discuss both Chapters IX & X from Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chapter IX dealt with the interesting phenomenon of the frown - a telltale expression we exhibit when we are disappointed, sad, or confused. Darwin notes: "From these considerations, we may conclu...

  In this episode of Discovering Darwin we tackle Chapter VIII - Joy, High Spirits, Love, Tender Feelings, Devotion  in Darwin's book  The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In this chapter Charles explores how we express ourselves when we are happy, in particular he discussed the two expressions associated with a happy mental state - smiling and laughing. Mark, Sarah an...

  Persons suffering from excessive grief often seek relief by violent and almost frantic movements, as described in a former chapter; but when their suffering is somewhat mitigated, yet prolonged, they no longer wish for action, but remain motionless and passive, or may occasionally rock themselves to and fro. The circulation becomes languid; the face pale; the muscles flaccid; the eyelids dr...

  "The fact of tears not being shed at a very early age from pain or any mental emotion is remarkable, as, later in life, no expression is more general or more strongly marked than weeping."  pg 154 EEMA Charles Darwin.   In this episode we explore Chapter VI: Suffering and Weeping where Darwin describes in excruciating detail the muscles involved in the crying face of infants and h...