Comments on: Book review – Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/Reviewing fascinating science books since 2017Sat, 08 Feb 2025 20:40:43 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.com/By: Cantor's Body (a reading of Grundlagen) - Puissance & Raison/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-95057Sat, 28 Sep 2024 07:16:39 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-95057[…] l’EHESS 2007-2008 – Philosophie naturelle 19. ↑ The Inquisitive Biologist – August 2019 – BOOK REVIEW – GOOD ENOUGH: THE TOLERANCE FOR MEDIOCRITY IN NATURE AND SOCIETY 20. ↑ Wikipedia – Vipassana movement 21. ↑ Inevitably, this technique has ended up in the […]

Liked by 1 person

]]>By: Le corps de Cantor (une lecture de Grundlagen) - Puissance & Raison/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-94984Sat, 27 Jul 2024 07:33:14 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-94984[…] l’EHESS 2007-2008 – Philosophie naturelle 15. ↑ The Inquisitive Biologist – août 2019 – BOOK REVIEW – GOOD ENOUGH: THE TOLERANCE FOR MEDIOCRITY IN NATURE AND SOCIETY – « We have achieved this now, but the drive persists, “our bored neurons crave action”. So […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – Imperfection: A Natural History | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-94848Fri, 26 Apr 2024 12:35:28 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-94848[…] in perfect adaptations. I first touched on this back in 2019 when reviewing Daniel S. Milo’s Good Enough which, as per its title, argued that evolution does not care for perfection: good enough to survive […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – Flaws of Nature: The Limits and Liabilities of Natural Selection | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-94832Fri, 19 Apr 2024 13:46:09 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-94832[…] in 2019, I reviewed Daniel S. Milo’s book Good Enough which was a critique of adaptationist storytelling. For organisms to survive, evolution by natural […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals about Human Stupidity | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-88838Tue, 13 Jun 2023 15:40:43 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-88838[…] animals show that such cognitive chops are surplus to requirement. Here, too, it seems that being good enough […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – The Story of Evolution in 25 Discoveries: The Evidence and the People Who Found It | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-24237Wed, 11 Aug 2021 15:42:18 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-24237[…] He explains that evolution does not always result in perfect adaptations – they only have to be good enough to help in producing the next generation. And he points out that natural selection can only ever […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – What Is Health? Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-21852Wed, 07 Jul 2021 15:42:45 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-21852[…] and rejiggles existing structures for new functions. Furthermore, Daniel S. Milo’s Good Enough criticized adaptationist storytelling and made an interesting argument for the persistence of the […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-11959Wed, 12 Aug 2020 19:31:09 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-11959[…] out, evolution as a process makes do with whatever is at hand and cannot plan ahead. It selects for whatever solution works, rather than finding the theoretically best possible […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-7021Wed, 27 Nov 2019 14:25:42 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-7021[…] The evolutionary story – see what I did there? – goes something like this: our odds of surviving and reproducing increased by cooperation (e.g. hunting or babysitting) and tool making. Both of these required not only communication but especially what psychologists call a theory of mind. This is the ability to realise that you have thoughts, emotions, desires, and beliefs – in short, mental states**. And that others have them as well. We use these to explain and predict the behaviour of other people. As a solution to tackle the problems faced by hominins on the savannah, face-to-face and over short time periods, this worked reasonably well. As evolutionary biologists are always keen to point out, evolution as a process makes do with whatever is at hand and cannot plan ahead. It selects for whatever solution works, rather than finding the theoretically best possible solution (this was the theme of Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society). […]

Like

]]>By: Book review – The Dark Side of the Hive: The Evolution of the Imperfect Honeybee | The Inquisitive Biologist/2019/08/08/book-review-good-enough-the-tolerance-for-mediocrity-in-nature-and-society/comment-page-1/#comment-5542Wed, 04 Sep 2019 11:28:41 +0000http://inquisitivebiologist.wordpress.com/?p=4253#comment-5542[…] These are but some of the biological idiosyncrasies that Moritz & Crewe highlight. Despite these imperfections, honey bees are an evolutionary success story. A recurring theme is that many oddities can be explained by evolution having to make do with whatever (developmental) material is at hand. Another theme, as also recently argued by Daniel S. Milo, is that evolution in biological systems is about finding feasible rather than optimal solutions (see my review of Good Enough: The Tolerance for Mediocrity in Nature and Society). […]

Like

]]>