Sublime

While there are several candidates for the most important equation in evolutionary biology, I would pick Price’s Equation, which in its simplest formulation reads: ▵cov(vi, zi) change in average characteristic = covariance(relative fitness, characteristic). This is a very powerful and general formula. For example, a particular gene for height can b

Although at first glance the “new” family

Prices arise from the countless acts of many individuals attempting to trade in various goods. They are an emergent phenomenon.

la loi de Briffault.

The behavior of each bee in a colony is governed by a simple set of rules that, through interactions with the environment and the other bees, leads to an end that was no part of any individual bee’s intention, allowing the colony as a whole to thrive—as if by an invisible wing. Put another way, bees are relatively dumb. Beehives are remarkably smar

We know that life’s remarkable robustness, in large part, is dependent on variation; systems that suppress or lose their diversity are prone to collapse.

The take-home message from Schelling’s story—that incentives sometimes backfire—is familiar to psychologists.