Letters on the Evolution of Life and Human Nature
Gabriel Dover
CONTENTS
How to read this book
The first correspondence
THE TWIN PEAKS
The Leicester connection
Taking your name in vain
Sublime yet pathetic
Time to move on
'Natural Sorting'
The monk in his garden
The genetic lottery
The case against the hopeful
monster
Mendel to the rescue
Almost but not quite
Barbara's jumping genes
A sneak preview
The second correspondence
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MOBILE P GENE
The P elements are coming
A simple case of molecular drive
Molecular drive and natural
selection: a mutual accomodation
First come, first served
A simple case of molecular
coevolution
The third correspondence
WHEN IS AN ADAPTATION NOT AN ADAPTATION?
The evolution of bat-eared foxes by
means of television
Exaptations and adoptations: a
brief introduction
Honing locks and keys
Just-so storytelling
We are selected, therefore we are
A solution looking for problems
The fourth correspondence
THE IGNORANT GENE
Evolution as ideology
Anti-Dawkins
One step forward, two steps back
Where did Dawkins go wrong?
The 'paradox of the organism'
Yes, we have no paradox
Who reproduces?
Long live the ephemeral phenotype!
No genetic blueprints
Unoccupied space: natural or
unnatural?
We are all monsters now
Not improbable and not perfect
The fifth correspondence
IS DAWKINS AWARE OF THE ERROR OF HIS WAYS?
Genetic bookkeeping
Good cop, bad cop
Selfish-genery is not the same as
selfish DNA
Do the laws of physics and chemistry
get in the way of biology?
Slowing down evolution
The sixth correspondence
GENETIC TURNOVER; OF COURSE, OF COURSE
If it's your DNA, you won't get away
Train swopping
I'll show you mine, if you show me
yours
Genetic homogenization and
concerted evolution
Keeping it all in the family
'Give them something to do'
The two-step process of evolution
The seventh correspondence
MOLECULAR DRIVE FOR ADVANCED PLAYERS
Genetic buffers
Bringing in selection at a later stage
Is the chromosome a natural barrier
to homogenization?
Like ripples in a pool
Molecular drive at the population
level
All in the same boat
The eighth correspondence
MOLECULAR COEVOLUTION
What's in a name?
Getting there, without being pushed
Biased systems: we have ways of
making you go
Molecular drive and meiotic drive
are not the same thing
Molecular drive and selfish DNA are
not the same thing
Welcome selection
The case of the duff gene
The evolution of tolerance
Regulating genes by TRAM
The evolution of slot-machines
Me and Francis Crick
The ninth correspondence
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES
An origin of species?
Love songs and species
Concerted evolution in the
period
gene
Period turnover
Molecular coevolution in period
genes
Is
period a general or special case?
The tenth correspondence
BIOLOGICAL BARRIERS
The misappropriation of natural
selection in the definition of
individuality
How many roads must a species
travel?
Odysseus leads the way
The eleventh correspondence
SEX - A NEW PERSPECTIVE
The basis of stasis
Sex makes the world go round
Five thousand, but who's counting?
The first sexual act
The twelfth correspondence
HOX! HOX! HOX!
'There is, philosophically speaking,
only one animal'
The first signs: shock, horror!
Beyond head, middle and tail
Masters and slaves
Promiscuous genes
Serial transformations
Putting it all together by modules
Before and after
Hox
A mess, but it works
From 0 to 14 in four hours
Getting lost in the net
Extending the net
Hox is everywhere
Looking for molecular coevolution in
development
Another example
The eyes have it
How do alliances shift?
It's all in the mess
One hundred, but who's counting?
Are legs exaptations?
Back to Newton
The twelfth correspondence
TWO MINUTES THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
Football versus chess
Universal selection?
Do we really understand the laws of
physics?
The thirteenth correspondence
BORN TO ADOPT
Looking for the eternal
Pulling one's leg
Same genes; same story; different
outcomes
Swopping regulatory circuits: simple
to do, profound in effect
Making
Hox more subtle
Centipedes, snakes and butterflies
Centipedes and lavatory rolls
Adoptations: a missing term in the
science of form
A brief memo
Back to centipedes
Singing from the same hymn sheet
Choosing the environment
Adoptational landscapes
Keeping left!
The fourteenth correspondence
THE UNKNOWABILITY OF DNA
Three into one won't go
A psychological difficulty
Darwin's finches: what we know and
what we don't know
An operational tall order
The fifteenth correspondence
THE EVOLUTION OF INDIVIDUALITY
Determined to death
Tossing human nature
Predicting with hindsight
Extrapolating from nothing to
nothing
The hunt for 'universals'
There's no such thing as an average
human
No one is normal
There's more to human nature than
adaptations
We are individuals not groups
Human cloning: you cannot recreate
yourself
No nature, no nurture, just Chaliapin
Glossary
Further Reading
Index
