Roberts, Richard

Robert Richards. I have two complaints, also two historical observations. First, that Darwin s first hypotheses was a polyphyletic hypothesis, namely that there are different archetypes that come up independently of one another, and even that hypothesis is preserved in the Origin, and he says,... 

Robert Richards Well, this is an historical question, about which there may be some dispute, but there is evidence for it and we can talk about that later. 

Robert Richards There are different kinds of Monera, that produce the different... 

Robert Richards If you look at the Generelle Morphologie der Organis-men, which is the 1866 book, as he says the roots for Protista, for plants, and for animals have different foundations. 

Robert Richards I would think that to be a pseudo-account. Gradients don t do anything except lie on a page. 

Robert Richards. Yes, it s where you choose to stop but I guess in this case I would say that it s a placeholder for a kind of explanation that we know would be the more appropriate form of explanation. 

Robert Richards. So when you have those traits, which do not seem to have any purchase on success and reproduction, then I think you re perfectly right to be very sceptical about that, but take some other kinds of traits, something that is almost as ambiguous as rape. Because rape occurs under a lot of different conditions and in some cases you re not quite sure how to evaluate the behaviour and so on. But, as we were talking at coffee, what about maternal attachment Now that s a fairly vague concept as well. It is the kind of response a mother will have for an infant. That attachment, and again, very often vaguely described, but one can focus on particular aspects of it. Let me just ask you - do you think this is ripe for evolutionary analysis So that s the basic question. 

Robert Richards Well, but probably not evolutionary derived. You may have to look at the whole population to see whether it s a trait that it is. Talk about maternal attachment. That s a ubiquitous phenomenon. It has certain essential features, and the evolutionary advantage seems pretty straightforward. 

Robert Richards Well we ve learned what the explanation is. The maternal attachment would seem to be the fact. Now we want an explanation or an account of it. Now a lot of explanations in science have that character that you said to know that heavy bodies fall faster than lighter bodies, which is of course true of air resistance and so forth, but to understand the principles of fall does seem to have. .. 

Robert Richards Well, we can continue this conversation. Just one thing to be pointed out. We know, for example, that when mothers are deprived of immediate behavioural interaction with their children, the attachment is less. That is something we didn t know before. 

Robert Richards . .. that the immediate contract that the mother had with her child if that is delayed a great deal, the attachment, the kind of what I would think of as an instinctive response of the mother to the child, is proportionately less. So that s something we didn t know before. We do know it now. But all of this. .. even though these are facts one would think of as a very simple sort, they do cry out, or they need an explanation. And it seems to me the evolutionary explanation is straightforward, and I doubt that many people in this room would deny it. 

Robert Richards Not again to jump on John too much, so I ll jump on Steve Rose simultaneously. Are there any traits, either simple behavioural traits, responses that human beings exhibit on a behavioural level, that you would think are adequately accounted for in evolutionary terms ... 

Robert Richards But isn t that what scientists actually want to do is try to partition out what are sort of global effects to try to find particular causes that account for various aspects of those effects. 

Robert Richards This is just a simple question about - are there behaviours, not drive-by shootings in Los Angeles, but simple behaviours that human beings exhibit, that seem to be most perspicuously analysed by giving an evolutionary adaptable account And this won t be the account. And not only that - any evolutionary account, I think we all agree about this, is going to take into perspective the environment, because evolution, we presume, does count on certain constant environments in order to exhibit the kinds of effects that it can select. 

Robert Richards The phases of the moon probably have an effect on various traits that we exhibit, but we think them unimportant to consider. 

Robert Richards. He certainly did not. But on the other hand, those were the particular kinds of explanations that he specialised in and thought the most important. And he did on individual traits, I have to say, and tried to give and account for them which was a reasonable account. 

Robert Richards. Not only, I presume, do doctors refer to patients by their disease, but doctors refer to one another by their technical abilities, with the knife , for example, as a surgeon. If you were a hospital administrator (and I know what the answer to this question is going to be, but I d like to hear it anyway) and you have to make a decision not unlike individuals in a university department have to make a decision about hiring, and you have the knife who has that kind of technical expertise, but not noticeably is this person an ethical paragon. You have to weigh different values, and I guess... 

Robert Richards Presume you have just chosen one path almost immediately, namely you hire the knife . 

Robert Richards But I mean a good knife , as opposed to just an OK knife , but he might be a very nice person. 

The Rowett Institute attracted a significant number of women researchers in the field of biochemistry, another of the early notables being Marion B. Richards.59 Richards, daughter of Robert Richards, a commercial traveller, obtained her M.A. in 1907 and a B.Sc. in 1909. She was the first woman chemistry graduate of Aberdeen to undertake research, completing a D.Sc. with Professor Freundlich at the University of Leipzig in 1916. 

Clive J. Moores George N. Okafo John K. Roberts Richard J. Smith Joseph G. Stowell... 

While working as an assistant for professors at MIT, Ellen Swallow married Robert Hallowell Richards, a professor of mining engineering, head of MIT s new metallurgical laboratory. The match worked they had no children but devoted their energies to science. Robert Richards proved to be supportive of his wife s work, promoting it whenever possible. 

Jacobs, F. Robert, Richard B. Chase, and Nicholas J. AquUano. Operations and Supply Management, 12th ed. New York McGraw-Hill/lrwin, 2009. 

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