In which Max explores the history of the Gaia hypothesis and wonders whether it needs to be “Darwinized”
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Re-thinking Living Fossils, Again
In which Max re-examines a recent re-examination of living fossils, with the help of a new paper by Beckett Sterner
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Ediacaran Enigma: Uncertainty and Underdetermination in Precambrian Paleontology
In which Max considers the problems involved in interpreting the enigmatic fossils of the Ediacaran Period, as well as some influential attempts to interpret them
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Paradox of Stasis
In the second part of a three-part “Problematica,” Max examines why the development of punctuated equilibria did so little to upset Gould’s early adaptationist and progressivist ideas about evolution—at least at first
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How to Change Your Life Using Punctuated Equilibria
In the first part of a three-part installment of “Problematica,” Max examines what Stephen Jay Gould was up to on the eve of “Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism” (1972), and introduces an interpretive puzzle
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Stray Thoughts on Contingency Following the MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar
In which Max reflects on the recent MBL-ASU History of Biology Seminar on historical contingency in biology
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