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Monday 30 November 2009

Exaptions and Spandrels

Quite how I got here, I have no idea. What I do know is that I hate Stephen J. Gould and Steve Pinker with a passion that I have not felt since the referee at Liverpol v Sunderland allowed a goal quite clearly outside the rules of the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKq_7Tl1eyQ

The real problem is that I have only the vaguest idea how I got here - exaptions and spandrels, that is. One moment I was minding my own business quietly in awe of David C. Geary's (http://web.missouri.edu/~gearyd/)papers on education and the next I was contemplating whether the wing feathers of Archaeopteryx represented insulation gone wrong or a precursor to NASA's new breed of re-entry vehicles.

Gould and Pinker are culpable, as are every person who has ever made me think (this probably means YOU), for introducing the world of academia and thinking and stuff in the first place. I should have stuck with the old wood. Although bark, when you think of it could have been an exaption, a spandrel or an adaptation. I wish I believed in Intelligent Design.

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