Josh Mitteldorf

Josh Mitteldorf studies evolutionary theory of aging using computer simulations. The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http://mathforum.org/~josh

A Brief History of Science

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For those of us in the thick of it, there is great irony in the fact that the Scientific World View led to the deepest, most abstract theory in the history of science which actually falsified the Scientific World View. Most scientists today are acting as though this had never happened. ——————— From the time … Read more

It’s about time!

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“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future!” — attributed variously to Yogi Berra and to Niels Bohr By the time you get to the end of this essay, you may be wondering whether Berra got the phrase from Bohr, or Bohr picked it up from a premonition of a Yogi-ism to come. … Read more

Origin of Life: Unsolved or Unsolvable?

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I am drawn to think about experimental facts that point to the need for rethinking the foundations of today’s science. This has been a theme of some of the articles on this blog page. I consider the mystery of life’s origin to be a phenomenon in this category. How did the first living things emerge … Read more

Cosmic April Fool

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When Isaac Newton discovered the equations that govern motion of the planets through the heavens, he was able to solve them with pencil and paper much faster than the planets themselves were moving. Thus he was able to make useful predictions. Solving the equation — even when it involves oodles of numerical computations by hand … Read more

Are the mRNA shots affecting birth rates?

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From the beginning, there have been glaring signs that the mRNA shots may be impairing fertility. FDA overrode signals that, in years past, would have been considered unacceptable dangers. After majorities of the reproductive-age population were inoculated, many of us expected to see sharp declines in birth rates beginning nine months later. Preliminary data suggests … Read more

Cold Fusion is a suppressed technology

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One cold weekend in the fall of 1985, professor Stanley Pons of the University of Utah asked one of his undergraduate students to look in on an experiment that he and professor Martin Fleischmann had been conducting in their spare time. For two years, they had been running electric current through tiny metal cubes in … Read more