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I feel like a CS education should prepare one for this kind of field. What's a good way to get started learning more about evolution?

by obblekk 12y ago

3rd3 12y ago
Nature of Code by Shiffman may be a good fit. I haven't read it yet though, maybe someone else can say something about it.
kartman 12y ago
The Selfish Gene is a great and insightful book that I would recommend.
- stan_rogers 12y ago
  Great book, yes, but don't stop there. There is a lot more to evolution than Dawkins suggests; selection, no matter the mechanism, is, after all, determined by phenotype (the "realised organism", if you will) rather than genotype. And there are a lot of models of selection (and of modification) that make accurate predictions but don't have the Dawkins seal of approval. You'd be missing a lot if you allow yourself to become stuck in the notions of 1976, no matter what their merits at the time.
colin_mccabe 12y ago
Stephen Jay Gould published a lot of books about evolution. "Evolution and Extinction" is a nice light read to get started (just to pick a random book of his). "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" is a more formal book where he pulls together a lot of the ideas from the other books and from his research. He develops a lot of ideas in "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"... basically: * Organisms are constrained by their evolutionary history... it's "easier" for them to develop in some directions than others. For example, the vertebrate body plans is extremely ancient and there are a lot of genes that do exactly the same job in mice and men, or even in more distantly related ancestors. Embryology and the field of Evolutionary development ("evodevo") has made a lot of this more concrete recently. Similarly, there is evidence that organisms draw on their evolutionary history as a "library" of possible responses to new stimuli. * Punctuated equilibrium: the fossil record shows millions of years of little to no change, followed by sudden mass extinctions that set the stage for another equilibrium period. * Sexual selection: if females are looking for some feature, males evolve to have that feature, even if it has no actual use or is harmful to the species. And vice versa. The peacock's tail is the classic example. * More controversially, Gould argues in favor of hierarchical selection, the idea that natural selection can act on groups or species as well as individuals. This is something that Dawkins vigorously denies, preferring to view the individual gene as the sole unit of evolution.

I feel like a CS education should prepare one for this kind of field. What's a good way to get started learning more about evolution?

by obblekk 12y ago

I feel like a CS education should prepare one for this kind of field. What's a good way to get started learning more about evolution?

3rd3 12y ago

Nature of Code by Shiffman may be a good fit. I haven't read it yet though, maybe someone else can say something about it.

kartman 12y ago

The Selfish Gene is a great and insightful book that I would recommend.

stan_rogers 12y ago
Great book, yes, but don't stop there. There is a lot more to evolution than Dawkins suggests; selection, no matter the mechanism, is, after all, determined by phenotype (the "realised organism", if you will) rather than genotype. And there are a lot of models of selection (and of modification) that make accurate predictions but don't have the Dawkins seal of approval. You'd be missing a lot if you allow yourself to become stuck in the notions of 1976, no matter what their merits at the time.

colin_mccabe 12y ago

Stephen Jay Gould published a lot of books about evolution. "Evolution and Extinction" is a nice light read to get started (just to pick a random book of his). "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory" is a more formal book where he pulls together a lot of the ideas from the other books and from his research. He develops a lot of ideas in "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory"... basically: * Organisms are constrained by their evolutionary history... it's "easier" for them to develop in some directions than others. For example, the vertebrate body plans is extremely ancient and there are a lot of genes that do exactly the same job in mice and men, or even in more distantly related ancestors. Embryology and the field of Evolutionary development ("evodevo") has made a lot of this more concrete recently. Similarly, there is evidence that organisms draw on their evolutionary history as a "library" of possible responses to new stimuli. * Punctuated equilibrium: the fossil record shows millions of years of little to no change, followed by sudden mass extinctions that set the stage for another equilibrium period. * Sexual selection: if females are looking for some feature, males evolve to have that feature, even if it has no actual use or is harmful to the species. And vice versa. The peacock's tail is the classic example. * More controversially, Gould argues in favor of hierarchical selection, the idea that natural selection can act on groups or species as well as individuals. This is something that Dawkins vigorously denies, preferring to view the individual gene as the sole unit of evolution.