Sources: biology

More stories from the edges of biology demonstrating something clearly like cognition in ‘primitive’ organisms, plants, even just cells; memory and decision making without brains or evolution. Excellent review of work and ideas across a range of fields and experiments.

Excellent and highly readable review of the rise of remarkable and controversial challenges to the standard model of evolution.

Having heard many times that the right side of the brain connects to the left side of the body and vice versa, I had never really thought to ask why, and I had no idea it was ubuquitous throughout the brain-possessing animal population. This article provides an intuitive explanation, though for those of us with spatial dyslexia the illustrations can be a bit bewildering.

Excellent introduction to a trend in science away from computational/representational theories of mind — also away from Cartesian/Aristotelian, human/brain-centric assumptions — and toward more active, environmentally-embedded theories that, refreshingly, focus on things other than humans first, like plants.

A delightful story about the author’s obsession with slime molds. An unlikey subject revealed to be more fascinating than one might imagine. Poetic and compelling writing, fantastic and beautiful photographs.

Don’t really inow what to do with this but I find it pleasing. A dead-pan intro about plant evolution concludes with the assertion that flowers appeared and invented love, and then led to everything we care about. The article is really an introduction to a work of musical and collage-animation art based on Emily Dickenson’s poem Bloom — the song is beautiful and Joan as Police Woman has a great voice.