On the 85th anniversary of Alexandr Rasnitsyn

This issue of Palaeoentomology is dedicated to the foremost Russian entomologist, palaeontologist, and evolutionary biologist, Alexandr Pavlovich Rasnitsyn, who will be 85 on September 24 this year. The authors and those numerous colleagues, who could not, for various reasons, participate, wish a happy birthday to the undisputed worldwide leader of palaeoentomology!

Cruel Insensibility and an Ethics Without Authority

This article considers the phenomenon of being insensible to animal cruelty, and how such insensibility relates to human transgressions of the planet. I consider the visualization of animal culls that appeared upon the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic. The spectacular wasting of animal life, I argue, discloses the economic logic by which humanity secures itself as a sovereign species. Such a logic and its visuality are not only underpinned by a broader necropolitical paradigm, moreover, they co-constitute a primal scene that enables the liquidation of animal life to the point of extinction. Following the evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, I consider animal culls in relation to the phenomenon of virus dumping, a systemic perturbation of forest ecologies preceded by the influx of capital in agricultural markets that results in the release and rapid evolution of viruses. I therefore recapitulate the relationship between animal cruelty and the economy of planet wasting that subtends it. In this vein, I consider how the visuality of animal cruelty is predicated on a banal violence. Yet, drawing from Hannah Arendt, I call for an ethics without authority, a version of the Sensus Communis by which we might witness cruelty from within the depths of planetary transgressions.

Richard Lewontin (1929-2021): Evolutionary Biology’s Great Disrupter

An appreciation of the career of the evolutionary biologist and activist Richard Lewontin (1929-2021)

What drives meme virality? A quantitative study of meme shareability over social media

The internet meme is a recent phenomenon in the mass media industry, but its etymological route can be traced back over 4 decades, when evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins decided to coin a “monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’”. Memes carry the prolific characteristics of a parasite, and can be as common as a catchphrase. This aspect of memes has revolutionized the way content is consumed on digital platforms, and therefore the advertising of content on such platforms This research examined how recognizability, humour and shareability each impact meme virality. This research found positive correlations between recognizability and virality, humour and virality; and shareability and virality.

What drives meme virality? A quantitative study of meme shareability over social media

The internet meme is a recent phenomenon in the mass media industry, but its etymological route can be traced back over 4 decades, when evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins decided to coin a “monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’”. Memes carry the prolific characteristics of a parasite, and can be as common as a catchphrase. This aspect of memes has revolutionized the way content is consumed on digital platforms, and therefore the advertising of content on such platforms This research examined how recognizability, humour and shareability each impact meme virality. This research found positive correlations between recognizability and virality, humour and virality; and shareability and virality.

Troubles with the evolutionary theory of self-deception

The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers was the first to address the well-known psychological phenomenon of self-deception from the standpoint of natural science. According to Trivers, self-deception evolved as an offensive strategy in the evolutionary arms race between the deceiver and the deceived. Though apparently both tenable and plausible, Trivers? evolutionary theory of self-deception, which takes the enhancement of interpersonal deception as the proper function of self-deception, is burdened with the number of difficulties. In this paper, I will argue that it is conceptually impossible for self-deceivers to deceive others about false beliefs they have falsely acquired as if they were true. If interpersonal deception is the conceptual impossibility for self-deceivers, then interpersonal deception cannot be the proper function of self-deception.