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Evolving Thoughts

One man's struggle against impermanence

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Grumpy 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...

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November 30, 2006

Why no posts? Housemoving, that's why

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...

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November 25, 2006

Testing tech stuff

Category: Administrative

Ignore what's below the fold, unless you are one of those who just can't not look......

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November 23, 2006

On Learned Ignorance

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...

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Biology and palaeontology Qs and As

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...

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November 22, 2006

Science laureates

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...

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November 19, 2006

At last! An Australian geological period!

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...

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Making sense of evolution

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...

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God of the gaps

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...

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November 16, 2006

Slifkin on ID

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...

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Zeno and the evolutionary tortoise

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....

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November 15, 2006

Ask a Science Blogger - Pickup lines

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...

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November 14, 2006

Agnostic still

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...

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November 12, 2006

Travel diary

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)....

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An Aussie in Wisconsin

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...

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November 11, 2006

The evolution crackpot index

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....

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November 8, 2006

A tourist's view of the US midterms

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...

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November 5, 2006

Enroute, tired, and shagged out

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...

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November 1, 2006

Against units in biology

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...

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