Was the Watchmaker Blind? Or Was She One-Eyed?

Was the Watchmaker Blind? Or Was She One-Eyed?

The question whether evolution is blind is usually presented as a choice between no goals at all ('the blind watchmaker') and long-term goals which would be external to the organism, for example in the form of special creation or intelligent design. The arguments either way do not address the question whether there are short-term goals within rather than external to organisms. Organisms and the...

Murder, she wrote or was it merely selective nontreatment?

Did she jump because she was the big sister or because the trampoline was safe? Causal inference and the development of social attribution.

Children rely on both evidence and prior knowledge to make physical causal inferences; this study explores whether they make attributions about others' behavior in the same manner. A total of one hundred and fifty-nine 4- and 6-year-olds saw 2 dolls interacting with 2 activities, and explained the dolls' actions. In the person condition, each doll acted consistently across activities, but diffe...

The Blind Watchmaker

his tales from nineteenth century theology interspersed with recent experiments needing superglue to stick false tails on Kenyan widow birds to assess their mating potential! The Blind Watchmaker' is about evolution-^ specifically, the power of processes of cumulative seleC' tion to develop biological systems of amazing complex ity. It is a tightly argued exposition which sets out to defend the...

‘She was referred from one hospital to another’: evidence on emergency obstetric care in Karnataka, India

Introduction Launching of the the National Rural Health Mission (2005) has brought a sharp policy attention to maternal health with its several initiatives such as (a) cash and material benefits to pregnant women; (b) strengthening health institutions especially of First Referral Units (FRUs); and (c) conducting regular maternal death audits to ensure quality Emergence Obstetric Care (EmOC). In...