Mermaids

Women with fish tails are among the oldest and still most popular of mythological creatures, possessing a powerful allure and compelling ambiguity. They dwell right in the uncanniest valley of the sea: so similar to humans, yet profoundly other. Mermaids: Art, Symbolism and Mythology presents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and beautifully illustrated study of mermaids and their influence on Western culture. The roots of mermaid mythology and its metamorphosis through the centuries are discussed with examples from visual art, literature, music and architecture—from 600 BCE right up to the present day. Our story starts in Mesopotamia, source of the earliest preserved illustrations of half-human, half-fish creatures. The myths and legends of the Mesopotamians were incorporated and adopted by ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman cultures. Then, during the early medieval period, ancient mythological creatures such as mermaids were confused, transformed and reinterpreted by Christian tradition to begin a new strand in mermaid lore. Along the way, all manner of stunning—and sometimes bizarre or unsettling—depictions of mermaids emerged. Written in an accessible and entertaining style, this book challenges conventional views of mermaid mythology, discusses mermaids in the light of evolutionary theory and aims to inspire future studies of these most curious of imaginary creatures.

The Obligation to Tear Through the Veil: An Analysis and Transformation of Mankind’s Insufficient Complacency Through the Novels of Jenny Offill

This thesis explores the ways in which we as humans are alienated by the fundamental social structures of our world and how the novels of Jenny Offill offer a possible remedy. With a specific focus on the psychological and evolutionary aspects of womanhood and motherhood, this text attempts to illustrate the ways in which these novels address the imposing weight of such fundamental structures in the 21st century. Through an analysis of the nuclear family, this thesis examines the debilitating and profound existence of women, and more specifically, mothers. Offill’s novels present a profoundly clear picture of the modern world as it depicts the reality and ramifications of psychoanalytic and evolutionary theory. This work demonstrates how Offill’s texts attempt to remedy the core dissonance of our binary-laden human existence with clarity and realization rather than acceptance of an oversimplified past and a debilitating future.

An Information-Theoretic Measure of Cultural Success

I develop a simple but principled method for measuring the amount of culturally-transmitted information from a written target work that is actually retained in human minds and capable of influencing behavior. Using procedures inspired by Claude Shannon’s 1951 method for estimating the entropy of written English, I estimate the entropy of samples from the target work with a treatment group (those that have read a target work) and a control group (those who are of the same culture but who have not read the target work), using human minds as encoders-decoders in the communication model. KL divergence quantifies the information that the treatment group already knows relative to the control group. This method controls for shared cultural inheritance and does not require commitments to what information from the target work is important. The general technique can be profitably extended to a variety of domains, including evolutionary theory, methods of teaching, and the study of music.

Assessing the risk of vaccine-driven virulence evolution in SARS-CoV-2

The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 virulence, or lethality, threatens to exacerbate the burden of COVID-19 on society. How might COVID-19 vaccines alter selection for increased SARS-CoV-2 virulence? Framing current evidence surrounding SARS-CoV-2 biology and COVID-19 vaccines in the context of evolutionary theory indicates that prospects for virulence evolution remain uncertain. However, differential effects of vaccinal immunity on transmission and disease severity between respiratory compartments could select for increased virulence. To bound expectations for this outcome, we analyse an evo-epidemiological model. Synthesizing model predictions with vaccine efficacy data, we conclude that while vaccine-driven virulence remains a theoretical possibility, the risk is low if vaccines provide sustained robust protection against infection. Furthermore, we found that any increases in transmission concomitant with increases in virulence would be unlikely to threaten prospects for herd immunity in a highly immunized population. Given that virulence evolution would nevertheless impact unvaccinated individuals and populations with low vaccination rates, it is important to achieve high vaccination rates worldwide and ensure that vaccinal immunity provides robust protection against both infection and disease, potentially through the use of booster doses.

Neuroscience needs evolution

The nervous system is a product of evolution. That is, it was constructed through a long series of modifications, within the strong constraints of heredity, and continuously subjected to intense selection pressures. As a result, the organization and functions of the brain are shaped by its history. We believe that this fact, underappreciated in contemporary systems neuroscience, offers an invaluable aid for helping us resolve the brain's mysteries. Indeed, we think that the consideration of evolutionary history ought to take its place alongside other intellectual tools used to understand the brain, such as behavioural experiments, studies of anatomical structure and functional characterization based on recordings of neural activity. In this introduction, we argue for the importance of evolution by highlighting specific examples of ways that evolutionary theory can enhance neuroscience. The rest of the theme issue elaborates this point, emphasizing the conservative nature of neural evolution, the important consequences of specific transitions that occurred in our history, and the ways in which considerations of evolution can shed light on issues ranging from specific mechanisms to fundamental principles of brain organization. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory’.

Naturalistic Moral Realism and Evolutionary Biology

Perhaps the most familiar understanding of “naturalism” derives from Quine, understanding it as a continuity of empirical theories of the world as described through the scientific method. So, it might be surprising that one of the most important naturalistic moral realists, Philippa Foot, rejects standard evolutionary biology in her justly lauded Natural Goodness. One of her main reasons for this is the true claim that humans can flourish (eudaimonia) without reproducing, which she claims cannot be squared with evolutionary theory and biology more generally. The present argument concludes that Foot was wrong to reject evolutionary theory as the empirical foundation of naturalized eudaimonist moral realism. This is based on contemporary discussion of biological functions and evolutionary fitness, from which a definition of “eudaimonia” is constructed. This gives eudaimonist moral realism an empirically respectable foundation.