Charles Darwin

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“How Do Robots Have Sex?”

April 27, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

From “Robocopulation” an Economist article about scientists trying to figure out polymorphism with the aid of rodent robots:

“‘How do robots have sex?’ sounds like the set-up line for a bad joke. Yet for Stefan Elfwing, a researcher in the Neural Computation Unit of Japan’s Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), it is at the heart of discovering how and why multiple (or polymorphic) mating strategies evolve within the same population of a species. Because observing any species over hundreds of generations is impractical, Dr Elfwing and other scientists are increasingly using a combination of robots and computer simulation to model evolution. And the answer to that opening question? By swapping software ‘genotypes’ via infrared communications, ideally when facing each other 30cm apart. Not exactly a salty punchline.

Charles Darwin was intrigued by polymorphism in general and it still fascinates evolutionary biologists. The idea that more than one mating strategy can coexist in the same population of a species seems to contradict natural selection. This predicts that the optimum phenotype (any trait caused by a mix of genetic and environmental factors) will cause less successful phenotypes to become extinct.

Yet in nature there are many examples of polymorphic mating strategies within single populations of the same species, resulting in phenomena such as persistent colour and size variation within that population. Male tree lizards, for instance, use three different mating strategies correlated with throat colour and body size, and devotees of each manage to procreate.

Simulations alone can unintentionally overlook constraints found in the physical world, such as how far a critter looking for a mate can see. So the OIST team based their simulations on the actual behaviour of small, custom-made ‘cyber-rodent’ robots. This established their physical limitations, such as how they must align with each other to mate and the extent of their limited field of view.”

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“Limiting Facial Animation May Make People Less Appealing”

March 31, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

I’m terrible at recognizing faces but really good at reading them, at interpreting the microexpressions that reveal inner feelings. Dr. Paul Ekman, the inspiration for the TV show Lie to Me, pioneered the study of facial expressions during his psychological career. From a 2003 New York Times interview with him conducted by Judy Foreman:

Question:

More than 100 years ago, Charles Darwin proposed that human facial expressions are universal. Anthropologists like Margaret Mead thought the opposite. What do you think?

Dr. Paul Ekman:

Initially, back in 1965, I thought Margaret Mead was probably right. But I decided to get the evidence to settle the argument. I showed pictures of facial expressions to people in the U.S., Japan, Argentina, Chile and Brazil and found that they judged the expressions in the same way.

But this was not conclusive because all these people could have learned the meaning of expressions by watching Charlie Chaplin and John Wayne. I needed visually isolated people unexposed to the modern world and the media.

I found them in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. They not only judged the expressions in the same way, but their posed expressions, which I recorded with a movie camera, were readily understandable to people in the West.

Question:

One of your most fascinating findings is that if a person merely arranges his face into a certain expression, he will actually feel the corresponding emotion. In other words, emotions work from the outside in as well as the inside out. Is happiness really as simple as putting on a happy face?

Dr. Paul Ekman:

In a very limited way, yes. The trick with happiness is that while everybody can smile, most people can’t move one crucial muscle around the eyes that must be moved to generate the physiology of happiness. With anger or disgust, though, everybody can make the right facial movements and turn on the physical sensations of those emotions.

Question:

If I received Botox injections all over my face and could not make normal expressions, would my emotions be similarly curtailed?

Dr. Paul Ekman:

Probably not. I did a study with Robert Levenson, professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, on people who had been born with facial paralysis. We found no impairment in their ability to recognize or experience emotions. There is a problem with Botox, though. Limiting facial animation may make people less appealing.•

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Old Print Article: “When Eugenists Disagree,” New York Times (1921)

February 6, 2013 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

Leonard Darwin as a boy in 1853 with his mother-aunt, Emma.

Leonard Darwin as a boy in 1853 with his mother-aunt, Emma.

I love science but I know you should approach the “accepted scientific wisdom” of any age with a calm skepticism. If you don’t believe me, check out the opening of this horrifying November 20, 1921 New York Times piece:

“Though nearly unanimous on many fundamentals, the eugenists who came here from all parts of the United States and Europe at the recent second international congress disagreed radically on many of the details of their science.

They are nearly as far apart on the question of cousin marriages as neighborhood gossips, from whom the controversy was borrowed. Papers were read showing the bad effects of cousin marriage. But the President of the congress was Major Leonard Darwin, a son of the great Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin married a cousin. Major Leonard Darwin married a cousin. Major Darwin is the admitted leader of the eugenics movement in England.

The question of delayed marriages caused wide dissension. According to Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, unless the parents are young the children are apt to be inferior. On the other hand, Dr. M.P.E. Groszmann cited evidence that when the father was over 50 at the birth of the child, that child had five times to ten times the chance of being distinguished which another child would have whose father was 40 or under.

‘Casper L. Redfield, in studying the breeding of horses, cows, hens, etc.,’ said Dr. Groszmann, ‘comes to the conclusion that the race-winning colts are the progeny of mature horses that have by long practice attained high speed before the colts were born. Fischer’s statistics of human beings seem to show that other things being equal, the children of older parents ‘exemplify in a striking way the inheritance of acquired characters.’ He claims that the probability of being eminent, when born from a father over 50, is five to ten times that when born from a father of 40 or less.’

While opinions varied greatly on these and certain other complex questions borrowed from biology, the eugenists were nearly unanimous in favor of less birth control for the healthy, talented, intellectual, energetic people; more birth control for those of lesser endowment; the severe restriction of immigration to prevent the inflow of poor stocks and individuals; the segregation and sterilization of habitual criminals and the feeble-minded.

Nervous disorders were traced to the lack of balance in persons whose trunks were overdeveloped, as compared to their limbs, or whose limbs were overdeveloped as compared with their trunks. Persons suffering from a lack of balance in either respect were warned against marriage with persons having the same tendency.”

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“He Could Not Believe That A God Could Exist Who Would Design A Cat That Would Torture Mice”

August 3, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

A passage about Charles Darwin’s religious beliefs from a Browser interview with evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne:

“What about his own religious views? Was he an atheist?

When he was younger he was probably religious by default, in the way that most liberal people were religious in Britain back then. He was actually going to train to be a minister, but didn’t like it very much. As he became older, he started shedding all these appurtenances of belief. He would still use words like Creator. For example, he says in The Origin that the Creator breathed life into one or more original forms of life. People take that to mean that he was religious. But if you read his autobiography, or his letters to [Thomas] Huxley and others, it’s clear that he didn’t believe in any kind of personal God at all. He says, for example, that he could not believe that a God could exist who would design a cat that would torture mice, or a wasp whose larvae eat their prey from the inside. The horrors of nature convinced him that the world was a naturalistic, materialistic phenomenon.

I doubt there was any vestige of real religion left in Darwin by the time he was a middle-aged man. He didn’t go to church even though his wife, Emma, did. And he never made any expression of religious belief. Creationists are always trying to promulgate the myth that Darwin was religious, but there’s simply no evidence for it. Almost all of us who have read Darwin realise that. He may have called himself an agnostic – which is, by the way, a term invented by his friend Huxley – because atheist was a strong word back then. But I don’t think he believed in God, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t think he was going to go anywhere after he died.”

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“Occasional Vomiting, On Two Occasions Prolonged”

May 22, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Charles Darwin: gassy mess.

On May 20, 1865, chronically ill Charles Darwin recorded the symptoms of his terrible stomach problems, which may been result of something called Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome:

“For 25 years extreme spasmodic daily & nightly flatulence: occasional vomiting, on two occasions prolonged during months. Vomiting preceded by shivering (hysterical crying) dying sensations (or half-faint). .  ringing in ears, treading on air and vision. (focus and black dots) . . . (nervousness when E. [Emma] leaves me)—What I vomit intensely acid slimy (sometimes bitter) consider teeth.” (Thanks Why Evolution Is True.)

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