Julian Barbour has written a clear and groundbreaking manifesto in The End of Time that states what may be the most profound insight since Aristotle. Time, according to Barbour, the reference by which all of Newtonian physics is measured is merely an illusion!

Newton proposed a universe of physics which contained a fixed reference coordinate system upon which physical existence plays out. The cartesian or polar playing field contains three fixed dimensions of space and one of time. In Newtonian physics, the world simply operates according to the rules of motion which he so clearly identified.

While most experiments conformed to Newton’s picture of physical reality, there were some experiments, like black body radiation, that did not work out according to plan. Just as Newton corrected and extended Aristotle’s views, Einstein, Bohr and the others corrected and extended Newton’s mechanics with quantum mechanics.

Just as Newton’s view ran into experimental problems, quantum theory runs into problems when trying to incorporate gravity into a grand theory. Barbour painstakingly develops his theory, and a method of visualizing the basic concepts that permit his theory to be understood. (more…)

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed, way back in 1801, that the effect of the environment and an organism’s response to it was the mechanism for change over time and generations. His theory was disputed and derided by Georges Cuvier who could not admit to change in organisms – that they were integrated wholes incapable of change in form or function. Cuvier was a giant of scientific thought and prestigue in many other fields, so his influence was so great that even Lamarck’s patron, Buffton abandoned his support of Lamarck.

Poor Lamarck, who died in poverty and obsurity, is finally being vindicated by a branch of science called epigenetics. It turns out that many mechanisms of gene expression and phenotyping are heritable and reversable after all! These mechanisms operate without necesarily effecting the genome of the organism itself. Many of these mechanisms are related to the effect on the organism by its environment and the stresses it undergoes. (more…)

Recent reports of God’s love for gambling with cosmic rays and free radicals, along with her relentless smiting of inefficiency gives new evidence for evolution. Michael Archangel from the Seraphim Institute reports new research showing the completely random nature of cosmic ray DNA adjustment , and breakage of base pair bonds by free radical interaction. The direct result of these random events is the first driving force of the process called evolution – the random variation of DNA coding.

The second process, natural selection, is driven by God’s policy of smiting inefficiency. The smiting is effected largely through her agents – predators, starvation, parasites, changes in environment and competition. (more…)

Bryan Sykes is a pioneer in researching mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). That is the little extra bits of DNA that are included in mammal cells not within the nucleus. The DNA in the mitochondria is passed down only on the female line, as they are not part of the recombination in sexual reproduction, but are included as part of the egg. Like the amoeba, the mitochondrial DNA only changes due to mutation.

Professor Sykes determined that the 500 base pairs of “junk” mitochondrial DNA mutates slowly and at a pretty constant rate, so he figured that by comparing the “junk” bits of DNA he could figure out if your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother is the same as mine. Well surprisingly enough, those of us of European decent have only seven mitochondrial mothers, and from anywhere in the world only thirty three.

(more…)

Since the discovery in the 1920s that all types of radiation can cause gene mutations, scientists have wondered what role high energy cosmic rays might play in human evolution. Yet it was an idea destined never to find favour among geneticists, who could determine no hard evidence that the background flux of cosmic rays might have had any noticeable effect on human cell mutation.

All this is about to change, as an examination of ice cores extracted from sites in Antarctica and Greenland provides new information on the level of cosmic rays reaching Earth in past ages.

When so-called “primary” cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere they generally break up to produce a plethora of “secondary” particles that form isotopes, which fall to Earth and are preserved each year in layers of ice. One such isotope is beryllium 10, found within the ice cores, which provides clear evidence that on three occasions over the past 100,000 years � around (more…)

“Lets make English America’s Official Language” is the clarion call for many activists resisting America’s apparent polyglot tendencies. My recent post on what makes America special as a country showed how it is important that each generation of immigrants succeed and also speak English. Over the years politicians and guardians of American heritage have bemoaned that immigrants are not fluent in English. President Teddy Roosevelt said, “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

Well, a recent study by Douglas Massey at Princeton University and Ruben Rumbaut along with Frank Bean at the University of California, Irvine have found that this goal may take care of itself! In Southern California, their study shows that the children of Mexican Immigrants have lower Spanish fluency and better English, and their grandchildren mostly speak English as their first language. (more…)

Antonio Damasio has written two books in one: A tour of his field of active brain imaging science which provide new insights into the dynamic working of emotions and feelings, and a biography of Benedictus Spinoza who three hundred and fifty years ago published exquisite, but very disruptive insights into the nature of man.

The important thing is that Looking for Spinoza, in the end, brings its multiple theses together in a gratifying view of the human condition. It shows not only how much we now know about the function of feelings and emotions, and how they regulate the body. Damasio shows how exquisitely accurate Spinoza’s insights were.
At first, Looking for Spinoza seems a little disjointed – what do brain scans and symptomatic analysis of people with brain lesions have to do with seventeenth century philosophical writings? Well, it turns out, quite a bit. It seems that Spinoza, intuited the functional relationships between emotionally competitent stimuli, emotions and feelings that are only now are being rediscovered by neuroscience. (more…)

Remember the story about the Siberian breeder who bred tame Silver Foxes? Over just a few generations Dmitri Belyaev selected only the most tame foxes to breed, and ended up with a dog-like fox – as tame as you please, thank you. The foxes also had a number of other characteristics that came along with the tameness – similar to the changes between dogs and wolves – droopy ears, and patchy color, etc.

Well, this same fellow also did a similar experiment with rats! He developed two colonies; one about as friendly as you can imagine, and the other colony a clan of uber-rodents that are more vicious than those in Willard. The New York Times reported that Frank Albert of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionalry Anthropology has convinced Dr. Belyaev to loan him a few rats from each of his strains to look for the genetic differences between the two closely bred colonies. (more…)

Michael Shermer, the editor of Skeptic Magazine and a frequent contributor to Scientific American has produced a work that explains the basis of morality and ethics on a scientific basis. The system of ethics and definition of what is good and what is evil has usually been assigned to the realm of religion. In ancient times, the likes of Aristotle and Socraties wrestled with this subject with only provisional results.

Religious folk tell us that God establishes right and wrong, and assigns punishment to those who break God’s Law. The premise is that without God establishing the rules, humanity would fall into disarray with everyone making up their own rules. Under this view, the rules are rigid and established under the authority and pronouncements of God as interpreted by the leaders of the religion.
Shermer soundly refutes this viewpoint, and makes an excellent case for his Provisional Ethics and Provisional Morality. These ideas are founded on several insights: Moral Naturalism, an Evolved Moral Society, the Nature of Moral Nature, Provisional Morality, Provisional Right and Wrong, Provisional Justice, and Ennobling Evolutionary Ethics. (more…)

Decoding genomes is getting cheaper. Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology is busy decoding the genome for the Neanderthal. Decoding the genetic makeup of Neanderthals will allow us to see just where this human relative falls in our family tree. By comparing the makeup of this genome with that of the varous races of modern humans, and with bonobos and chimpanzees we can see a little more clearly where they fall. (more…)