And here’s George Williams (p. 215 in Cohen’s ’George C. Williams and Evolutionary Literacy’)

Still time to apply for our travel grant!

Great couple of days in lovely Krakow talking about agency and individuality hosted by Adrian Stencel philevents.org/event/show/1...

Thrilled to have been able to review 'The Paradox of the Organism: Adaptation and Internal Conflict', a volume edited by @arvidagren.bsky.social & Manus Patten.

"...the reality that complex organisms function at all feels like pure magic, with the powers of molecular evolution behind the curtain."

Apply today for travel support for our @nitmb.bsky.social workshop!

Travel applications for the ‘Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation: Mathematical Foundations’ workshop are due TODAY!

Don’t miss your opportunity to join us in June
www.nitmb.org/internal-con...

Wow!! Congratulations!

You are not allowed to take photos but in the process of typing up notes now. Would be fun to discuss topic more at some point.

Interesting.

I visited the JMS archive at the British Library the other week and there there is correspondence between him and Lewontin where they discuss different nationalities (UK, US, France, Japan...) attitude to adaptationism.

Many people who are biologists rather than physicists thanks to Dawkins, as John Maynard Smith put it.

Interesting!

I’ve heard others having similar reactions.

And then a lot who, like me, were taken by his prose before they had any opinions on his, or anyone’s, views on evolution.

What was it that you didn’t like?

Don’t miss your chance to join us for the ‘Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation: Mathematical Foundations’ workshops!

Travel applications are closing in one week on Wednesday, April 15th www.nitmb.org/internal-con...

Yes!!

Come to Cleveland in June!

Thanks for all the guesses!

The answer is George Williams.

Williams!

A clue is that Daniel Dennett said the following:

“[He] showed me for the first time how hard it is to be a good evolutionary thinker, and how easy it is to make simple mistakes.”

MONDAY TRIVIA

The literary agent John Brockman described a biologist as follows:

“Few laypeople have heard of [him]. Yet nearly all evolutionary biologists, even those who do not agree with him, admire him.”

Who was he talking about?

Applications for the ECR research visit grants from the Internal Conflicts and Organismal Adaptation STN are due by the end of the month! €1000 to support visits by ECRs to a laboratory to e.g set up collaborations, learn new techniques, etc. See internalconflictsstn.wordpress.com/ecr-research...

#483 - The Paradox of the Organism: A Dialogue with Arvid Ågren & Manus Patten

#483 - The Paradox of the Organism: A Dialogue with Arvid Ågren & Manus Patten

Evolutionary transitions and reversions in individuality Abstract. Biological individuality exists in different forms—unicellular, multicellular, colonial, etc.—which have arisen through evolutionary transitions

This issue is headlined by Perspective Article: Evolutionary transitions and reversions in individuality

@martijnschenkel.bsky.social @arvidagren.bsky.social and Manus Patten

academic.oup.com/jeb/article/...

Congrats!

Looking forward to it!

Keen to hear your thoughts!

Ford EB. 2005. RA Fisher: an appreciation. Genetics. 71: 415-417.

Screenshot, black text on white background. It reads: Our meeting, which took place in 1923, was typical of Fisher. Like so many good things in my life, it was due to Julian Huxley. Though I was only an undergraduate at Oxford at the time, Huxley and I were researching genetic physiology together in the earliest days of that subject. Meeting Fisher somewhere, Huxley mentioned that he knew an undergraduate [myself] who had interesting ideas on genetics and evolution. Fisher was a Fellow of Caius; he was only 33 but was already becoming famous. Other people in his position might possibly have asked briefly about me; a few might even have invited me to go to see them. Fisher's reaction was different. The Fellow of Caius took a train to Oxford to call on the undergraduate! Characteristically, it did not occur to him to let me know that he was coming, so I was out when he arrived and he settled down in my rooms in College to wait for me. On opening the door of the sitting room on my return, I was surprised to find it full of smoke from pipe tobacco, a thing which disgusts me, and to see a stranger there, a smallish man with red hair, a rather fierce, pointed red beard, and a very white face. The cast of his countenance slightly resembled that of King George V. As he got up and came toward me, I noticed his eyes, hard and glittering like a snake's and seen through spectacles with lenses so thick that they resembled transparent pebbles. He took my hand in a firm, bony grip and, bending slightly forward, he gave me a momentary but most searching inspection. Then his face relaxed into a charming smile, the beginning of nearly 40 years of friendship.

Because we mostly see Fisher in black-and-white photographs, often from late in life, it is easy to forget that he had red hair and a red beard.

Remembered by E.B. Ford shortly after Fisher’s death. The tapes of Ford’s remarks were lost for many years and only published in 2005 thanks to Jim Crow.

This is a very interesting book. I'll be posting a (rather different) review soon.

“I came away feeling a pleasant discomfort at how complicated the topic is, but enlightened all the same.”

Many thanks to @cbo.bsky.social for the kind review of The Paradox of the Organism.

Good guess! The answer is ES Goodrich.