One man's struggle against impermanence
John Wilkins is an aged, 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 a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Queensland, in Australia. 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, which he is working into two books. One has been accepted for publication, and will come out in 2008; the other may be contracted soon. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids (they sort of make it a necessity, you know?).
If anyone knows of a tenurable, or even medium term, job in philosophy of biology, let me know. Have library, will travel. The contract runs out soon...
This blog is designed to host any random thoughts that happen to be passing through my forebrain at a given moment. So there will be errors...
Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion
Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)
Foundations of Systematics and Biogeography
Re-Engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality
Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World (Evolution and Cognition Series)
My personal page is here:
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
July 31, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
I just want to start out saying 1. Everybody has been tagged with this one, and 2. These aren't really "memes", although these days I think that term is otiose. A meme spreads itself. Anyway, now I'm back from such...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:56 PM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 26, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
In which our hero discovers the joys of walking... Next on my trip, I visited David Williams, a paleobiologist at the Museum of Natural History in London. We talked at length about the nature of systematics (which is something...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:21 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 17, 2006
Category: Logic and philosophy
Designs are abstractions based on how we model things.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:36 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
So, some of you are wondering what's happened. Well, maybe one of you is. Hi mum. I went to the Philosophy of Microbiology conference at Exeter - somebody forgot to tell the English that it's supposed to be cold here....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:16 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 10, 2006
Category: Administrative
I am spatiotemporally challenged (it goes with my inability to remember names, even those of my kids. Birthdays are often a disappointment for them). However, I am fairly sure I will be overseas for the next three weeks. Overseas being...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:00 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 8, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Rob Skipper has an excellent post at his blog entitled What Scientific Explanation Isn't. It's a good explanation of the DN (deductive nomological) model of explanation offered by Carl Hempel, which has come across some serious criticism of late. By...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:53 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Media Matters has a wonderful bow by blow debuning of Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory", better known as Godless: The Church of Liberalism. While I don't read the rabid blonde's droolings, it looks pretty good to me (apart from dating...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:34 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 7, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
I had a thought as I was recovering from my lack of sleep. What would you like me to cover? I have some forthcoming topics, but I thought you might like to suggest some philosophical issue with biology that interest...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:02 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Ha! While I was away, being humiliated and disparaged (and that was only my family), I get a mention in Nature. Well on their website, anyway, as one (#30) of the top fifty science blogs. Science education and reporting is...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:44 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
The question offered up to stump those ivory tower eggheads this week, is: On July 5, 1996, Dolly the sheep became the first successfully cloned mammal. Ten years on, has cloning developed the way you expected it to?... Pretty much....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:16 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 5, 2006
Category: Administrative
Well, despite major PowerPoint problems (I am so going to put Keynote on this Mac!) I survived my talk. It was, indeed, a very long suicide note, as I feared, but I gather the execution of said note is deferred...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:54 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
