Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
For over a century, biologists have debated the role of abstract mathematical theorizing in evolutionary biology. Many biologists see "gene frequencies" and "alleles" as concepts divorced from the organisms they study. Some have even called for a complete rehauling of evolutionary theory - a shift away from thinking about evolution as a "change in gene frequency" to something... else (unclear exactly what).
In this video, we review a historic clash between Ernst Mayr and the "beanbag geneticist" JBS Haldane. In 1964, Haldane wrote a defense of population genetics, and many of the points he made remain relevant today.
This video is an extended version of my recent Aeon article: aeon.co/essays/a-resurrected-defence-of-beanbag-genetics .
#evolution #education
For over a century, biologists have debated the role of abstract mathematical theorizing in evolutionary biology. Many biologists see "gene frequencies" and "alleles" as concepts divorced from the organisms they study. Some have even called for a complete rehauling of evolutionary theory - a shift away from thinking about evolution as a "change in gene frequency" to something... else (unclear exactly what).
In this video, we review a historic clash between Ernst Mayr and the "beanbag geneticist" JBS Haldane. In 1964, Haldane wrote a defense of population genetics, and many of the points he made remain relevant today.
This video is an extended version of my recent Aeon article: aeon.co/essays/a-resurrected-defence-of-beanbag-genetics .
#evolution #education
