152 thoughts on “The Biology of the Baroque

  1. CharlieM,

    i notice that Coyne does not even mention Noble’s examples of genetic networks. Does he have any arguments trying to refute Noble on these?

    A central confusion I note in Noble is the mixing up of developmental and evolutionary gene concepts.

    Coyne takes an evolutionary perspective. Noble thinks it’s all about phenotype. Phenotype is not irrelevant to evolution, but there is still a demarcation between evolutionary alleles and the units or interactions considered in phenotype.

    I think there may be a large chunk of talking at cross purposes.

  2. Allan Miller: If you’re crossing one species with another, and the offspring are fertile, they aren’t really different species, biologically speaking, even if we choose to name them so (dumb archetypal essentialists that we are). You can cross dogs with jackals.

    Does this mean that a new species that arises by symbiogenesis isn’t really a new species?

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