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.
September 29, 2006
Category: Creationism
The Washington Post has an opinion editorial by Paul Hanle, the president of the Biotechnology Institute in Washington. I recently addressed a group of French engineering graduate students who were visiting Washington from the prestigious School of Mines in...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:56 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 28, 2006
Category: Administrative
I keep seeing all these carnivals that I don't find myself on. So here's a note for all those hardworking carnival coordinators looking for stuff. If you or a reader thinks something of mine is worthwhile (email me for a...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:32 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 27, 2006
Category: Evolution
Tarantulas produce silk from their feet: "Researchers have found for the first time that tarantulas can produce silk from their feet as well as their spinnerets, a discovery with profound implications for why spiders began to spin silk in...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:42 PM • 0 Comments •
Category: Philosophy of Science
A new organisation, SEFORA (Scientists and Engineers for America), has been formed to counter the abuse and supression of science currently popular in American media and politics. They have drafted a "Bill of Rights" for scientists and engineers which includes:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:13 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Just when I am convinced that liberal values are dead and democracy, real democracy, is doomed in the biggest English speaking nation, along comes a major network (NBC) commentary, that puts it all out there, in a manner that Murrow...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:56 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 24, 2006
Category: Species and systematics
Razib has a little post on cultural cladism, but I think he gets it quite wrong. He repeats the usual trope canard that culture isn't like biology in terms of its evolution. I think it is exactly like it,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:22 AM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 23, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
New images of the Cydonia "face" show, as expected, that it's just another piece of Areology, not a monument left by aliens....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:49 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: History
Via Shakespeare's Sister, this video shows who the real nerd is......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:24 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
We may believe in some doctrine of evolution or some idea of progress and we may use this in our interpretation of the history of centuries; but what our history contributes is not evolution but rather the realization of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:30 AM • 20 Comments •
September 22, 2006
Category: Politics
'We'll bomb you to Stone Age, US told Pakistan' - World - Times Online. How interesting - one of the more democratic Islamic countries was told by the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, that the US would "bomb...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:19 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
I'm sick, my head hurts and I have a fever. That is why I did this, and why I got a lower score than anyone else who may compare themselves to me. Lynch made me do this. It' seems I'm...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:31 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 21, 2006
Category: Evolution
The Epoch Times is reporting the appearance of a snake with hindlegs in Shandong, China. Such reappearances of long-lost traits are called "atavisms", and in this case it appears this specimen has silenced genes that cause limb buds to stop...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:52 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Grace, of Will and Grace refuses to swim in Australian waters for a miniseries she (sorry, Debra Messing, the actor) is filming here. She's freaking out because of how Irwin died. It's OK GraceDebra. You will ... probably ......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:07 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 17, 2006
Category: Evolution
The more I hear of the international and national response about Steve Irwin, the more my flabber is gasted. I mean, I came to a grudging respect for the guy when I went to Australia Zoo with my kids...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:11 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 16, 2006
Category: Evolution
Some of you may know I am a contributor to the Talkorigins.org Archive (hey, it's written down the page, to the left, OK? No it's not. It's written on my homepage. Oops). My contributions have been done over the better...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:00 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 15, 2006
Category: Evolution
I'm reading Robert Carneiro's Evolution in Cultural Anthropology (Westview Press, 2003) right now, and it's a good introduction to the debate over cultural evolution in the social sciences from Spencer to the present day. But I have some criticisms....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:37 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 14, 2006
Category: Administrative
So's you know, I will be finishing the Darwin and the Holocaust series, but the reference I need seems to have evaporated in my desk mess. Have I mentioned that I hold to the Bomb Crater Theory of paperwork?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:53 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
Repost from the old blog: This week I am an Eighth Day Agnostic, as recent reformers in my irreligion have decided that we also don't know what a week is. My sermon for today begins with a question: When...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:39 AM • 20 Comments •
September 13, 2006
Category: Creationism
Previous posts in this thread: 1, 2, and 3 With this model of the bounded rationality of anti-science in mind, what lessons can we draw from it for public policy and education?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:18 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
LifeSite has this: Pope Preaches Against Chance Evolution: "Man is Not the Chance Result of Evolution". Yep, it's the old "evolution implies chance and a lack of meaning" trick. Second time we've fallen for that this week. Would you believe...?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:11 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
From the old blog: Tom Wolfe, whose works often show a considerable pretentiousness in my opinion, has a piece in the New York Sun entitled "Darwin meets his match" [old link dead, so this will have to do]. In...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:34 AM • 6 Comments •
September 12, 2006
Category: Creationism
What happens when rational coherence is not assumed, in the development of creationist views? No child is able to make their epistemic set maximally coherent, and so it is likely that they will acquire a number of mutually inconsistent...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:03 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 11, 2006
Category: Politics
Five years ago now, I was watching an episode of The West WIng, and channel surfing in the ads, as is my wont and my family's despair, when I happened on a news flash that there was a fire in...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:09 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 10, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
The development of one's conceptual world is not done in a vacuum. As Gilbert and Sullivan noted ...every boy and every gal That's born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative! but of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:53 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic. [Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 611] A question I have wondered about for a long time is this:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:52 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
In the last half hour, we reached 70k hits. I came to Scienceblogs with around 32k hits, after a year and a half of blogging, so my read rate has tripled. Thanks guys. I'll be sure to post something meaty...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:32 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 9, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Early on when I was publishing for the first time, I published in an online open access journal entitled The Journal of Memetics. Being naif, I didn't think it mattered. I had an idea I wanted to get out, and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:01 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 7, 2006
Category: Politics
There are those who contribute to the world in a positive way. No matter what you think of Steve Irwin's antics on camera, the man did a lot of good for conservation consciousness raising and teaching zoology to young and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:47 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Species and systematics
Every taxonomist has to check before they name a genus that the name hasn't been used before, or that their own taxon isn't a synonym of some previously named group. Eliminating synonyms is a complex task, involving a slew of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:16 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 6, 2006
Category: Humor
Well everyone else is doing it and it appears I qualify for an MIT position (anyone listening?), but I have to justify my nerdiness to skeptics. 1. I read all of Arthur C. Clarke's novels when I was a kid....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:27 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
And the state of nature, nasty, poor, brutish, and short, or so said Thomas Hobbes. But it seems Hobbes was wrong. Humans have always lived in society. That doesn't mean they lived in cities or nations, of course, but they've...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:06 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Design
John Allen, at National Catholic Review, has an interesting analysis of the motives behind the recent Evolution Study Day the pope held. Unsurprisingly, the issue is not whether life changed over time, or even whether natural selection works - although...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:16 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 4, 2006
Category: Species and systematics
The "Crocodile Hunter" guy has been reported killed in a freak skindiving accident off the coast of Queensland north of Cairns. Apparently he was pierced through the heart by a stingray. I visited his Australia Zoo a few years back...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:01 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 3, 2006
Category: History
I only just saw this today - here's a nice (and more informed) discussion of my use of Aquinas on design. It seems I relied on the term "designedly" a bit too much, when it should be about why the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:45 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
The New York Review of Books has an interesting article by Ronald Dworkin entitled "3 Questions for America". The three questions are: 1. Should alternatives to evolution be taught in schools? Dworkin says yes, but only if they are actually...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:13 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Reuters are reporting that neither creationism, which we didn't expect, nor ID, which we did, was the topic of the recent papal study group. Instead, it was the (legitimate, in my opinion) theological implications of evolution. In other words, since...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:02 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Race and politics
The claim often made is that Darwin is the sine qua non of the eugenics that the Nazis used to justify their genocide.What I aim to do today is show that while it is true (and widely accepted) that Darwinism...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:16 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 1, 2006
Category: Logic and philosophy
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an amazingly prolific and influential philosopher in America, and founded what has come to be known as "pragmatism", which is the idea that the meaning of terms depends on how they "cash out" in practice....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:37 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Because I don't like to follow the herd all the way......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:11 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
