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.
November 30, 2006
Category: Administrative
In case anyone thought that I had given into existential despair or had a major infarct or something, the answer is yes, I did, on both counts. Or, in other words, I moved house. It took five days, and I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:37 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 25, 2006
Category: Administrative
Ignore what's below the fold, unless you are one of those who just can't not look......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:21 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 23, 2006
Category: Creationism
Nicholas of Cusa wrote a book back in the 15th century called De Docta Ignorantia, often translated as "On learned ignorance". It has nothing whatsoever to do with this post. Well, it sort of does. Nicholas, a Cardinal, held that...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:29 PM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
This is such a cool site: the Biology and Palaeontology Qs and As site is for UK school students to ask questions of experts. And some of those questions are way sophisticated. Kids are always dinosaur nuts (or at least...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:43 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 22, 2006
Category: Philosophy of Science
Our Lords and Masters ask Who would you nominate for Scientist Laureate, if such a position existed? According to the dictionary, a "laureate" is "someone honored for great achievements; figuratively someone crowned with a laurel wreath". We can read this...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:39 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 19, 2006
Category: Evolution
Just because a bunch of German, French and British people invented geology some 200 or more years ago, all the "type locations" for the geological column have been defined in terms of Northern Hemisphere locations. Finally, though, we Australians...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:40 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Some time back, I was doing driving duty for a conference of philosophers (that's the collective noun; another is a dispute of philosophers) on a skin diving trip, and one of my passengers was Jonathon Kaplan (actually, if I'd crashed...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:20 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy of Science
One of the points made by Rabbi Slifkin in the article I cited recently is that if you insist on using God as an explanans in the aspects of the world we do not yet understand, that is going to...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:27 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 16, 2006
Category: Creationism
My favourite rabbi, Natan Slifkin, has a piece in the Jerusalem Post entitled "The problem with intelligent design". In it he distinguishes between thinking that evolutionary processes involve randomness and thinking that a universe that can evolve living things is...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:54 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
The Knoxville Metro Pulse Online has a nice guest opinion piece by Rikki Hall that uses Zeno's paradox as an analogy for creationists and evidence....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:02 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 15, 2006
Category: Humor
This week's question is What are the best pickup lines for scientists and science-savvy folk? Asking a geek this question is like asking a McDonald's chef for the recipe. Geeks don't pull. Or maybe, that's just me. Besides, I was...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:44 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 14, 2006
Category: Creationism
So, in an obvious case of Scibling Rivalry, Jason Rosenhouse has taken me to task about my comments on Dawkins and agnosticism. Indeed, I have been fisked. Obviously one can decide about whether God exists or not, and agnostics...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:26 AM • 49 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 12, 2006
Category: Humor
Well by now you are all no doubt dying to see my holiday snaps. Fifty years ago I'd be that annoying relative who insisted on holding slide nights after a vacation (I had a vacation once. I remember it well)....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:48 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
In a stress test of such quizzes, I took the test and found out I'm actually from the Great Lakes region... What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:11 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 11, 2006
Category: Creationism
Adapted sort of with permission from The Crackpot Index by John Baez, with contributions from the talk.origins howlers. A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to biology....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:36 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 8, 2006
Category: Politics
It has been a fascinating experience being in the US during an election. Josh Hayes, mine host in Seattle (I slept fine, thanks) took me to a polling booth, and we watched the count come in on CNN. A few...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:53 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 5, 2006
Category: Administrative
Here I am in Vancouver, which is a lovely place despite the rain, and while I'm overloading my cortex with philosophy of biology, we hit a landmark here. 100,000 unique visitors! And nobody to share the champagne with, if I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:14 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
November 1, 2006
Category: Evolution
The living world, it seems to me, causes no end of trouble for those who would classify it. Its levels, ranks, hierarchies and units all seem to be clear enough, until we encounter troublesome cases. Then they get very...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:48 PM • 8 Comments •
