Tag: Metamorphosis
Evolving Metamorphosis: A Hopeless Task
Your job is to explain insect metamorphosis in evolutionary terms. What will you say? We can learn from the example of two geneticists who basically said the process is “evolutionarily conserved” — that is, not evolved!
The Caterpillars Who Came to Dinner (and Lunch and Breakfast): An Interview with Lad Allen, Director of Metamorphosis
“Joni shed a tear as ‘Billy’ flew away. I have to admit that I got a little misty-eyed. I never imagined I could become emotionally attached to an insect.”
Dante on the “Angelic Butterfly”
In the matter of this particular image, seeing humans caught in a transformative process like the one enacted by caterpillars and butterflies, Nabokov was scooped by Dante in the Divine Comedy.
Of Molecules and (Straw) Men: Stephen Meyer Responds to Dennis Venema’s Review of Signature in the Cell
While my book presents intelligent design as an alternative to chemical evolutionary theory, Venema critiques it as if it had presented a critique of neo-Darwinism — i.e., biological evolutionary theory.
Darwinizing Metamorphosis with Magic
Pity the party that tries to Darwinize metamorphosis: to give an evolutionary explanation for the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly that resembles death and resurrection. One bold evolutionist has given it a try, but is his explanation an appeal to magic? In the documentary Metamorphosis from Illustra Media, biologist Richard Stringer explains why he was attracted to the study of butterflies. “That’s biology; it’s also magic.” Of course he intended the reference to magic as a metaphor, because he proceeded to investigate metamorphosis scientifically, examining the process in detail with MRI. Frank Ryan, however, writing for New Scientist, is weak on details and big on veritable magic, speaking of how metamorphosis arose or emerged with little more causation than casual Read More ›