18 July 2022 — Science for the People
By Nafis Hasan
“Pod” (pencil on paper) by Marikit Mayeno
“[What] is amazing is the similarity in the thinking of naturalists and dialectical materialists. The so-called dialectical world view is by and large also the world view of the naturalists, as opposed to that of the physicalists.”
—Ernst Mayr, Roots of Dialectical Materialism (1997)
Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin’s publication of The Dialectical Biologist in 1985 provided a gestalt moment which remains just as valid and applicable decades after the book’s publication, if not even more so. Despite such relevance, it would appear that the ideas presented have remained sidelined in mainstream philosophy of biology, thanks to decades of genetic determinism and the continued neoliberalization of science. But a survey of nascent ideas across different fields in biology negates such an assumption, and reinforces the importance of a dialectical framework for biological research—the legacy of Richard Lewontin.
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Russian military’s armoured vehicles roll into landing vessels after drill in Crimea, Black Sea, April 23, 2021
Chinese lunar capsule Chang’e 5 landed on moon’s surface on December 1, 2020 and returned to earth a fortnight later with the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years.
Astronomers tend to have their eyes, and minds, not merely in the clouds but beyond them. The dream of unimpaired vision tends to come with the territory; the better the uninterrupted line, the better the data. But the increasing incidence of clutter above the earth’s surface is becoming more than a point of minor interest. It preoccupies those keen on clarity and pollution, both in terms of actual space debris, and the issue of light disruption.
The New Dark Age 