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One man's struggle against impermanence
John Wilkins is an eternal student, who thinks philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. After a varied career, involving factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John finally completed his thesis on species concepts in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
This blog is designed evolved to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...
I also have an Australia-focussed blog: The Drought Resistant Philosopher
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
June 25, 2006
Category: Administrative
I suppose the regulars have noticed that I've dropped off a bit lately. I can explain... The next few weeks are mad for me. I have two papers to write, and deliver, one in Canberra at the Australasian Association of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:08 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Here is a paper in the Canadian Journal of Zoology which documents learned hunting behaviour among Tursiops truncatus, the bottlenose dolphin, in Western Australia....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:22 AM • 3 Comments •
June 23, 2006
Category: History
Yahoo news is reporting that Harriet, the world's oldest tortoise, has died aged 176 Harriet was collected by Darwin on the Beagle voyage in 1830, when she was about 2 inches. She found her way to Brisbane, where I currently...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:27 PM • 4 Comments •
June 22, 2006
Category: Creationism
The Interacademy Panel on International Issues has issued a statement on evolution:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:17 AM • 6 Comments •
June 21, 2006
Category: Creationism
Courtesy of Panda's Thumb, a link to this wonderful short OpEd: The York Daily Record - Coulter mangles Dover case, by Mike Argento. It includes many beautiful zingers about the mad blonde, but the best is this: ... that brings...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:38 AM • 5 Comments •
Category: Humor
... while I adjust my professional career. Please check back in a little while for more ranting....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:00 AM • 10 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Well after reading many papers by various bacteriologists, mycologists, and other non-vertebrates specialists, I have come to the conclusion that there is no single set of conceptions or criteria (that much abused word!) for something being a species in...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:11 AM • •
June 20, 2006
Category: Evolution
When we attempt to apply to organisms that are not obligately sexual (that is, which don't have to have sex to reproduce) concepts that were specified to use with those that are, we have problems. The Recombination Model is...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:06 AM • 1 Comments •
June 19, 2006
Category: Evolution
The second main approach to a natural conception of microbial species (by which I mean, as opposed to operational, practical or conventional ones, collectively called "artificial" conceptions) is what I will call the Quasispecies Model. According to the concept...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:05 AM • 2 Comments •
June 17, 2006
Category: Evolution
The cluster of genomes of asexual organisms forms what is called a "phylotype" (Denniston 1974, a term coined by C. W. Cotterman in unpublished notes dated 1960; I like to track these things down). Phylotype is a taxon-neutral term,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:46 AM • 4 Comments •
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