Now on ScienceBlogs: And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores
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.
August 31, 2006
Category: Species and systematics
Go check out Darren Naish's excellent series on the south east Asian wild pig, the babirusas, at Tetrapod Zoology, to see an excellent example of scientific blogging....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:25 PM • •
Category: Philosophy of Science
One of the problems of living at the edges of empire as I do, is that often you want to have access to older books that are hard to come by. Anything from about 1870 is pretty easy to get,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:13 PM • 1 Comments •
August 30, 2006
Category: Race and politics
Well, we have established that the subhuman thesis is not of Darwinian origins, and made a start on showing that the eugenics thesis isn't either (more to come later), but while we're all waiting, Daily Kos has an interesting article...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:06 AM • 5 Comments •
August 29, 2006
Category: Politics
A recurring theme in the blogosphere is that our reaction to the terrorist threats is disproportionate and fundamentally subversive of our social structure and freedoms. This is usually cast in terms of the rollback of civil liberties, the denial of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:24 PM • 4 Comments •
August 28, 2006
Category: Humor
In line with condemning past science for present day ills, the Daily Kos correctly identifies the reason why all coherence is gone, as Donne put it, and blames the slave trade on Copernicus....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:03 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Creationism
I won't comment on the execrable link made by that execrable TV show. Some things aren't worth the effort. But those whose minds aren't made up may still have a sneaking suspicion that somehow evolutionary theory was responsible for some...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:52 AM • 20 Comments •
August 25, 2006
Category: Species and systematics
Another group (in this case, pair) of scientists have come up with a species concept. In this case, it's published in the Journal of Mammalogy [304kb PDF], and it turns on species being protected gene pools. It's not new. It's...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:02 AM • 2 Comments •
August 24, 2006
Category: History
evolgen reports on debates in Nature about whether the term "prokaryote" is meaningful. Norman Pace argued that the term is a negative one ("privative" in Aristotle's sense), defined by what they do not have (which is to say, a nuclear...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:48 PM • 6 Comments •
Category: Logic and philosophy
Shelley of Retrospectacle has asked us: Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty? I am absolutely...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:41 AM • 49 Comments •
August 23, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Well, first there's flowers and chocolates, and then a nice restaurant... Or, if you want the cheaper option, go to EARTHTIME and download the files that describe both the best modern results and the techniques used....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:44 PM • 3 Comments •
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
