by Richard William Nelson | Mar 3, 2016
R2D2, short for Artoo-Detoo, is best known as the fictional robotic character in the Star Wars universe series created by George Lucas. Inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003, R2D2 has since been included in the Smithsonian Institution’s list of 101 Objects that Made America.
R2D2 is the good guy, the favorite character of George Lucas, known for always saving the day at least once in every film. However, R2D2 disses Darwin.
In the realm of biology, however, the R2d2 gene is a Darth Vader villain terrorizing Darwin’s once-popular theory.
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by Richard William Nelson | Feb 11, 2016
Starting with his infamous book, The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin legitimized racism based on the theory of evolution, albeit briefly. The complete title contains the essential phrase “preservation of favoured races” –
“On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”
How his concept of “races” applies to humans was clarified in The Descent of Man (1871). Darwin explains –
“The sole objective of this work is to consider… the value of the differences between the so-called races of man.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Jan 11, 2016
The status of evolution as a science is verging closer to extinction following a workshop in Germany last month. The essence and definition of science were at the center stage at this historic convening of leading physicists and philosophers of science last month.
The meeting convened in the Romanesque-style Ludwig Maximilian University lecture hall. Science writer Natalie Wolchover covered the story for Quanta Magazine, entitled “A Fight for the Soul of Science,” and later reprinted on TheAtlantic.com, entitled “Physicists and Philosophers Hold Peace Talks.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Dec 3, 2015
Natural selection, sometimes known as the opium of evolutionary biologists, has long been envisioned as the driving mechanism of biological evolution. “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” by Charles Darwin was the first publication to popularize natural selection.
In the words of twentieth-century evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge,
“A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.”
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by Richard William Nelson | Jun 11, 2015
De-extinction is thought to have first appeared, as a word, in The Source of Magic (1979), a science fiction book by Piers Anthony, and caught the attention of Hollywood.
Using ancient cloned dinosaur DNA, popular ER television scriptwriter Michael Crichton then captivated the imagination of American film producer Steven Spielberg with the 1990 novel Jurassic Park, igniting the de-extinction craze.
In 2013, de-extinction was announced to be a science, at least according to journalist Ben Macintyre writing in the Times (London, March 8).
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R2D2, short for Artoo-Detoo, is best known as the fictional robotic character in the Star Wars universe series created by George Lucas. Inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame in 2003, R2D2 has since been included in the Smithsonian Institution’s list of 101 Objects that Made America.
Starting with his infamous book, 
