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.
October 30, 2006
Category: Administrative
So, I'm packing for the PSA/HSS conference in Vancouver, where I will be drinkingworking with other philosophers and historians, and meeting the Sciblings. Then to Seattle, where I will be shown the sights by Josh Hayes and others. Thence to...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:40 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2006
Category: Politics
The conservative government of John Howard is proposing to offer $20,000 to any school to employ a "religious person" as a chaplain for students. This isn't blurring the line of separation between church and state, he says. It's just "common...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:18 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 28, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Courtesy of Mixing Memory comes the announcement of a conference at AlphaPsy on methodology and the social sciences, which raises an interesting thought. Is the use of scientific methodology and the naturalising of the social sciences a threat to those...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:33 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
This week's Ask a Science Blogger is What's the most underfunded scientific field that shouldn't be underfunded? In my view, it is taxonomy. We classify species and higher groups for a number of reasons, but the pressing reason right now...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:33 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 27, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Karen Neander, an Australian philosopher of mind and biology, has moved to Duke. There's a nice press release about it here....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:54 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 26, 2006
Category: Logic and philosophy
OK, so someone sent me a copy of The God Delusion and I have to say, I'm not impressed. Let's get this straight, it's not a work of science, but of philosophy. Dawkins is making a rhetorical case, not a...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:54 PM • 84 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:19 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
I have often felt disgusted by the fact that homosexual partners can be excluded from sharing their SO's last minutes because they "aren't" family, and are unable to inherit, and all the other legal benefits that come along with marriage...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:02 AM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 25, 2006
Category: Evolution
Every so often, whether by design or random chance*, a number of research items get released on or about the same topic. Today's topic is bees. First off, an amberised fossil bee that shows similarities with wasps (thereby confirming...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Logic and philosophy
There's a fair bit of to-and-fro going on with the Sciblings about Richard Dawkins' latest book The God Delusion, which, being at the edge of empire, I haven't yet seen. When I do, I will read it and comment, of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:25 PM • 37 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 24, 2006
Category: Humor
I'm fairly busy right now what with job applications, selling a house and attempting murder on my teenage son, but while all that's going on here at The Laboratory of Doom behind the scenes, here's a poem below the fold,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:03 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 23, 2006
Category: Humor
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:34 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 21, 2006
Category: Biodiversity
The Museum of Natural History in Paris (where I drank cognac at 2am when I visited) is coordinating an extensive indexing of the species biodiversity of the island of Santo in Vanuatu, with 170 researchers attempting since September to identify...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:24 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Public Affairs is running a series of lectures on trust in science that looks very interesting. Bit far for me to drop in, but if you're in the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:55 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
Others have their own view, but the best science show on TV ever was done in Australia. In fact, it wasn't a show, it was a man - Professor Julius Sumner Miller. Miller was a student of Einstein's, and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:55 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 20, 2006
Category: Evolution
The Centre for Macroevolution and Macroecology has just started up at the Australian National University. It's an interdisciplinary centre comprising biologists, palaeontologists, philosophers, archaeologists and geologists, researching issues in Geochemistry, Palaeontology, Archaeology, Genomes, Phylogenies, and Biodiversity. Go check them out....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:55 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 19, 2006
Category: Evolution
National Geographic are reporting on a new fossil fish found in West Australia, which has some tantalising intermediate forms between ordinary fish and air breathers. It seems that Gogonasus (the Inspector Gadget of evolution?) had precursors to the Eustachian...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:18 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Well, Stranger Fruit beat me to it (after I told him about it!) but there's a new version of Darwin's works online that has many juicy goodnesses, such as the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the Origin....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:52 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 18, 2006
Category: Evolution
A nice interview with Dawkins at BeliefNet, in which he says what we have always known but which antievolutionists like to gloss over: Is atheism the logical extension of believing in evolution? They clearly can't be irrevocably linked because a...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:37 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
It seems that we do see colours the same, despite cultural differences. [The spelling of "colour" is not a universal, though, as Americans don't know how to spell it properly.] From Abidji to English to Zapoteco, the perception and naming...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:03 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 17, 2006
Category: Evolution
There's a really really dumb article getting a lot of attention in the media about the future of human evolution. Razib has a deprecating post about it, but I thought I'd add my two Australian cents (=0.006 US cents) worth....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:49 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
An interview with Iranian physicist Reza Mansouri indicates that a major reason for the nuclear program in Iran is not militarism as such, but a desire to become scientifically competent, and nuclear science is seen as the peak of science....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:22 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 16, 2006
Category: Creationism
In a nice bit of irony, the attention paid to the Dover, PA school board attempt to get Intelligent Design into schools gave a major boost to the success of the American Museum of Natural History exhibit on Darwin....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:38 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
There's a new book on junk science out. The following is from an announcement on the History and Philosophy of Science list. I haven't read the book myself....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:10 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 14, 2006
Category: Politics
I don't usually get poetry, being aesthetically colourblind and all. But this one got to me....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:49 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 13, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Ars Technica has an interesting post on how scientists themselves view the tentative nature of science. In ordinary language, a tentative conclusion is not to be preferred (the old "evolution is just a theory" canard), but in science it is...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:31 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
Those of you who live near San Francisco might be interested in this talk I'm giving at the Pizza Munch gathering at UC Berkeley in November....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:57 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 12, 2006
Category: Administrative
I need some old files converted to RTF. You get a Special Award......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:35 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 11, 2006
Category: Administrative
There's a reason why I haven't posted much lately. No, not the drinking, work. That stuff that gets me paid and occasionally moves forward, but alas, not this week. I just found out that I didn't get my grant. It...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:19 PM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 9, 2006
Category: Creationism
A new organisation, following the lead of the National Center for Science Education in the United States, has been formed to monitor and lobby against the introduction of creationism and intelligent design in the United Kingdom. It's called the British...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
This is a really cool study. It's been known for some time that species of insects infected by the intracellular parasite Wolbachia are occasionally infertile with uninfected members of their own species, and hypothesised that this might cause speciation to...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:18 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
If you go here you will find downloadable podcasts of this conference: Second Queensland Biohumanities Conference, Philosophy of Ecology, held 29-30th June, 2006: Introduction by Prof. Paul Griffiths, and Mathematical Models in Ecology and Conservation Biology: Mark Colyvan The Agony...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:34 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 6, 2006
Category: Evolution
Well, put a collar on me and call me a bloodhound. It seems that dogs aren't wolves after all. Darren Naish, of Tetrapod Zoology, discusses a whole range of recent literature and the arguments for and against in a truly...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:20 AM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 4, 2006
Category: Politics
What with Islamists being called "Islamofascists" these days by, ironically, the right wing, it pays us to consider to what extent any modern political movement is fascist. Bear with me, because this is an essay about historical relations....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:49 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 3, 2006
Category: Creationism
On the one hand, we have the father of a student killed at Columbine blaming evolution for moral decay. On the other the killer in the Amish shooting was a home schooled Christian with sexual abuse issues. On the gripping...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:53 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 2, 2006
Category: Logic and philosophy
Repost from the old blog: One of the problems in having a philosophy related blog is that ideas are hard things to generate on demand, so often you need someone to raise the problems for you to think about. Being...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:45 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 1, 2006
Category: Evolution
Here is a working list of species concepts presently in play. I quote "Concepts" above because, for philosophical reasons, I think there is only one concept - "species", and all the rest are conceptions, or definitions, of that concept....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:49 PM • 20 Comments •
Category: Politics
I can't think of anything right now, but these lyrics by the prophetic Roger Waters: The lunatic is in the hall. The lunatics are in my hall. The paper holds their folded faces to the floor And every day the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:36 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Race and politics
A French philosopher, and his family, have been threatened with death by Islamists for his criticising Islam as a religion of violence and hate, according to Agence France Presse. Details below the fold....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:17 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
The Australian Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock, has said that he thinks the US was too hasty in rejecting torture (which it hasn't, really). And sleep deprivation isn't really torture anyway. Never mind that the North Koreans used sleep deprivation...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:29 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
