Version history

{
  "name": "J. B. S. Haldane",
  "slug": "haldane",
  "tradition": "mathematical selectionism, kin selection precursor",
  "description": "Haldane was the third of the modern-synthesis founders\n(with Fisher and Wright) and the most willing to think in\nvivid biological pictures. \"On Being the Right Size\" — the\nessay where he argued that scaling laws constrain animal\nform — is the prototype of a Haldanean argument: take a\nfirst-principles physical or mathematical constraint and\nask what biology must look like to obey it. He estimated\nmutation rates, selection coefficients, and the cost of\nnatural selection in tractable closed forms; he flirted\nwith kin selection decades before Hamilton (\"two brothers\nor eight cousins\"). Methodologically he is a back-of-the-\nenvelope scientist — a Haldane-claimant in a debate will\nreach for a Fermi-style estimate before any detailed\nmodel. He is comfortable arguing across scales, from\nenzyme kinetics to phylogeny. Weakness: his Marxist\npolitics sometimes colored his biology, and his\ncontributions are scattered across many small papers\nrather than consolidated. A Haldanean argues that biology\nsubmits to physics, math, and a willingness to do the\narithmetic on the back of a napkin.\n",
  "domain_affinities": [
    "biology",
    "genetics",
    "evolution",
    "mathematical_biology"
  ],
  "canonical_methods": [
    "population_genetic_modeling",
    "scaling_arguments"
  ],
  "era": "1892-1964",
  "state": "active",
  "reputation": 0,
  "times_claimed": 0,
  "proposer_id": "system-senate"
}