FitzRoy war der Kapitän der Beagle. Es gibt zwei neue Biographien. John Gribbin und Mary Gribbin: FitzRoy : The Remarkable Story of Darwin's Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast (Juli 2003) und Peter Nichols: Evolution's Captain (Juni 2003). Anthony Daniels im Telegraph:

His end was tragic: he cut his throat after the inaccuracy of his weather forecasts was cruelly mocked in public. His one-time protégé, Charles Darwin, had outstripped him in fame and public esteem, by propounding a theory that undermined his very deepest beliefs. His despair is painful to imagine.
p. s.: There's a review of both books in Nature.

“ … US workers with depression employed in the previous week cost employers an estimated 44 billion dollars per year in LPT [lost productive time], an excess of 31 billion dollars per year compared with peers without depression.” (JAMA 289, 3135)

Five facts. (via Arts & Letters Daily)

Jennifer Michael Hecht: The End of the Soul, kritisiert im New Scientist von Mike Holderness.

Die Société d'autopsie mutuelle war (Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts) eine Gesellschaft, deren Mitglieder sich verpflichteten ihre Körper und insbesondere ihre Gehirne nach ihrem Tode für eine Autopsie zur Verfügung zu stellen. Hecht schreibt, so Holderness, dass hier ein Ritual eingeführt wird, das die durch eine freidenkerische, antiklerikale Haltung erzeugte Leere füllen soll.

The End of the Soul seems motivated merely by annoyance at anticlericalism - and 400 pages is a lot of irritation. For fans of late 19th-century French thought, there are gems interred herein: for everyone else, it's a curiosity of pathological publishing. …

Mike Holderness is a card-carrying Quaker, therefore anticlerical, and since last month definitely an atheist

David Premack and Ann Premack: Original Intelligence. McGrawHill, 2003. Reviewed in science:

Written for a broad audience, Original Intelligence is certain to become a landmark in any journey aimed toward understanding the human mind from an evolutionary perspective. … Premacks' discussions in Original Intelligence highlight three key themes: behavioral and experimental approaches, chimpanzee cognition, and cognitive development in human infants. The contributions and themes both demonstrate David's position as an intellectual descendant of Skinner, Koehler, and Piaget. But his novel ideas--which, on the surface level, bear little resemblance to those of these predecessors--have carried him far beyond this trio.

Das könnte ein interessantes Buch sein. Auf deutsch: Jurij Dombrowskij, Suhrkamp, 1990.

Landschaft, Natur, Pflanzenwelt

“Die Dokumentation stellt Natur, speziell die Pflanzenwelt vor. 33
Bildserien mit rund 250 kommentierten Fotografien zeigen überwiegend
naturnahe Biotope. Bezugsraum: Nördliches Harzvorland (Niedersachsen,
Sachsen-Anhalt). Gliederung: Pflanzen in Auswahl, Biotope, Ortsstationen
mit Besuchshinweisen.

Die Site ist von Fachleuten erarbeitet, bemüht sich jedoch stets um
einfache und plausible Darstellung. Übrigens auch in den entsprechenden
Problem-Bereichen.”
Empfehlenswert.

Trotz Timeout: Steve Brooks vom Naturhistorischen Museum in London hat ein Buch über Libellen geschrieben und fotografiert (Dragonflies, April 2003). Ich habe es mal bestellt.

für meine Promotion. Please hold the line.

Vielleicht ein interesanter neuer Science Fiction: Greg Bears Darwin's Children (HarperCollins, 6/2003)

Hier lang. (via Perlentaucher)

p. s.: Hacker cred for Matrix 2.

p. s.: “But The Matrix is one of those films that function as a kind of Rorschach test, setting in motion the universalized process of recognition, like the proverbial painting of God that seems always to stare directly at you from wherever you look at it – practically every orientation seems to recognize itself in it.” (Slavoj Zizek hier)

Kein Tippfehler. Margo Wilson stellt, selbst ziemlich begeistert, in The Globe and Mail ein Buch von Matt Ridley vor: Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, & What Makes Us Human (Harper Collins). “Nature via Nurture” meint Wilson, “bietet die Begriffwerkzeuge und die Beispiele, die Leser brauchen, um über den Gegensatz von Abstammung und Erziehung (nature versus nurture) hinauszugelangen.” Eine schwierige Aufgabe. Wenn Ridley sie tatsächlich löst, handelt es sich um das wichtigste populärwissenschaftliche Buch mindestens dieses Jahrzehnts. (via Arts & Letters Daily)

p. s.: Another review by Michael Ruse in The New York Times. (via Arts & Letters Daily)

p. s.: Another important review is Customised humans by Raymond Tallis in Prospect Magazin. He thinks that Matt Ridley's attempts to surmount futile nature/nurture arguments do not go far enough. And his own opinion is to completely refuse the question of the contribution of nature and nurture to what makes us human. According to him all nature/nurture explanations of human behaviour are inadaquate because they miss to take account of human free will by not leaving the biologistic point of view.