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.
February 28, 2007
Category: Basic Concepts
One of the more difficult conceptual problems the layperson has with biology lies in the simple word "primitive". It has many antonyms - "modern", "evolved" and "derived", and like many biological uses of ordinary words, everybody thinks they understand it, and doesn't.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:32 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
This is a cool video, filmed in Panama by actual ecology students, foot fungus and all... ...It describes diversity at all levels from genetic diversity to ecosystem diversity.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:35 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 27, 2007
Category: History
"Holy Father," the voice said, "I don't quite know how to tell you this, but we have discovered what prove beyond doubt to be the very bones of Jesus!"... "Herr Tillich, I'm afraid we have quite a problem here, and we hope perhaps you can advise us. Archaeologists in the Holy Land have discovered the bones of our Lord Jesus!"
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:55 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2007
Category: History
Others cannot live without faith, without belief, without theology [or theory - the original is smudged.... (1974), "France", in Thomas F Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 117-163.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:03 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: History
Rees-Mogg repeats the old canards of conservativism about "modernity" - it is a moral failure, a panic against religion, a neurosis, and it caused social Darwinism and eugenics, leading to Hitler, or worse, George Bernard Shaw...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:11 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 25, 2007
Category: General Science
He began it to show that the established state-based papers weren't doing trheir job properly, and it took over 15 years to become profitable.... Ian Musgrave has a couple of articles that show fairly conclusively both that the paper is becoming firmly anti-science (as all good conservatives must be these days, it seems), especially with respect to climate change.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:32 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General Science
I think it means exhaust fans are pleasant to pirates and not to everybody else, who run to find aircon. NASA Watch thinks it means "that big ceiling fans can send flaming arrows down to kill pirates and people crossing the street".
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:54 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Your Dominant Intelligence is Intrapersonal Intelligence Reflective and thoughtful, you enjoy spending time alone.... A spiritual and philopsophical person, your inner calmness inspires and helps others.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:46 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Wiley resolves the age-old controversy...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:50 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
In another interesting piece about demarcation of science from nonscience (see my previous items about this here, here and here), Janet Stemwedel has a nice series of hand-drawn flowcharts that make the difference between creationist arguments and real science clear. Janet, I would have done nice neat computer-drawn flowcharts for you, if you'd asked...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:12 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
As I recently mentioned Grene's book with Depew, it's worth noting an interview with her by The Believer (Benjamin Cohen) here. It explains some of the themes in the book.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
After they worked out this was in fact how I operated, they actually did come and close the office door occasionally, but not often. On the other hand, if anyone fucked with my staff, I went ballistic, and in one case banned a lab head from ever coming in the door to ask for services after he abused a female staff member.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:04 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 24, 2007
Category: Humor
If you have a dog then it's a good idea to remove all chocolate from the house. If you have a dog and a wife/girlfriend then you have to make a hard choice."
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 23, 2007
Category: Basic Concepts
Last year and the year before I helped teach Philosophy of the Life Sciences here, and we used, respectively, one textbook and no textbook. Right now I'm reading a rather marvellous book, that would have set me up years in advance of where I am now, so this got me thinking (it's the job description, you know): what are the textbooks on Philosophy of Biology, and what are their respective merits?
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:35 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 22, 2007
Category: Politics
Now, when someone does active service for their country, there's an implied contract here - they should be able to expect that their service is given the support they need, and that they and their families will be treated with some respect for it.... But if you have a large military, all the social and political pressures are on expanding the military, not cutting it back, in part for the goals of (internal) empire building, but also because all the clichés and propagandistic jingoism are in place, and it's easy to call a disarmer a coward or a traitor.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:30 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 20, 2007
Category: Creationism
James Randerson, and the GrauniadGuardian blog site makes an interesting point about the new bionic eye. It's only a 4x4 grid of monochrome pixels, bnut it's revolutionised the life of a blind man.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:13 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
The environment thus is valued as a utilitarian resource, a giant storehouse of raw materials for the use of humankind. Right-wing Christians like Reagan's former interior secretary James Watt have argued against preservation of the environment in light of the Second Coming. Liberals have argued for environmental stewardship, often citing the "dominion" reference in Genesis as justification.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:03 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Most of us wait to relatively late in our careers to fulfil this solemn obligation because we know that successive generations of psychologists will ignore all the other words that we managed to pack into a lifetime of well-intentioned scholarship and remember us mainly for how we finished The Sentence.... And when researchers discovered that chimps in the wild used sticks to extract tasty termites from their mounds (and to bash each other over the head now and again), the world suddenly remembered the full name and mailing address of every psychologist who ever finished The Sentence with the words 'uses tools'.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:12 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 19, 2007
Category: Basic Concepts
This is a classic case of the sorts of strawman view of evolution that Edward Humes discusses when he notes that there is the real theory of evolution, as discussed by biologists, and the cartoon version that creationists discuss in order to inflame rejection against evolution itself....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:30 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 18, 2007
Category: Biodiversity
A paper just out today, in Nature, uses a novel technique devised by one of the authors, Dan Faith, called Phylogenetic Diversity (PD), to assess the biodiversity and conservation value of endangered species and regions in terms of how unique they are in evolutionary history.... When Félix Forest, Richard Grenyer, and colleagues at the Jodrell Laboratory of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, U.K., and other research centers examined plant life in two biodiversity hot spots in South Africa's Cape region, however, they found that species number and phylogenetic diversity don't always go hand in hand.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
But this has to be commented on. Some idiotic ignoramus named Mary Grabar attacks Sam Harris, who most likely knows three orders of magnitude more than she about the history of both science and religion, thus, in a column nicely titled "Letter to a Stupid Atheist": You have a degree in philosophy, I see, but were you aware that science as a mode of thought came about through monotheism?... And thus humanity advanced from one that believed that spirits lived in trees and rocks to one that believed that one Creator created this intricately marvelous world we live in. The scientific endeavor then became one where individuals observed and studied various aspects of this creation.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:07 PM • 25 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
This announcement of an essay competition at Inter-Research, a German-located research group, may be of interest to students: Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics Ethics of Climate Change CALL FOR ESSAYS Major consequences of climate change are now predictable to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.... Please refer to the “Ethics of Climate Change Essay Contest” support document that accompanies this letter, and the “White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change” rockethics.psu.edu/climate/whitepaper-intro.htm for background and guidance.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:48 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 17, 2007
Category: Creationism
I'm late to this party, no doubt, but courtesy of Nobel Intent, here is a number of interviews with scientists and philosophers discussing the Evil Undead Zombies of creationism and intelligent design.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:12 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: History
Apparently this was a real exam answer.... Thanks to Rich Baldwin...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:05 AM • 33 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 16, 2007
Category: Creationism
The incredibly smart, handsome and active Ian Musgrave has a piece on Panda's Thumb on Behe's key example, the clotting cascade, showing that all the homologues of the mammalian clotting cascade can be found doing other things in other organisms, and that it could very well have evolved by hijacking prior functions to a new task.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:52 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
We have, in addition to my paper, presentations on biological essentialism as a proposal, on the ontology of race, on a Deleuzian view of populations, on biology wihout species (that'll be fun!), on the conceptual commitments of naming species and other taxa, and on what "good species" are.... While I'm tidying up loose ends, I visited my old haunts over the weekend in Melbourne, as well as visiting Dan Faith at the Australian Museum in Sydney (don't ever stay at the Ibis in Sydney, though the one in Melbourne was very nice).
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:09 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 15, 2007
Category: Basic Concepts
Theory: A word that gets used a lot in discussing science, or attacking it.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:12 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
"The Chronologers' Quest: The Search for the Age of the Earth" (Patrick Wyse Jackson), gives a nice and comprehensive account of the project to date the earth, and the means used to do it, from early modern theological approaches like the famous Ussher's (and Jackson has some corrections to make to Gould's essay on the topic), through to the guy who finally achieved it.... After Steno and Hooke tried to establish methodological protocols for geology, there were a number of developments in geology, leading to the theories of Werner, who thought all was caused by the actions of water (Neptunism), and Desmarest, who thought it was due to the actions of volcanoes (Vulcanism).
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:59 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 12, 2007
Category: Creationism
Another stupid piece by DIsco, in which David Klinghofer tries to blame Darwin for eugenics, totally overlooking the fact that the mediate source is animal husbandry, which predates Darwin by several thousand years, and that the immediate source is genetics, not evolution. I think that we should immediately teach the doctrine of signatures (in which natal traits are formed by the parents looking at similar objects, like the "striped and speckled sheep" in Genesis, which were mated before peeled branches) rather than genetics, because of the bad consequences of people misusing that science for prior political aims.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:54 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Species and systematics
One of the ways museum taxonomists, like John Gould, who later described the famous finches, did their work on specimens returned to their museum by explorers like Darwin, was to employ traits that were distinctive. Many organisms were skinned and stuffed, and their skeletal remains used to identify special traits (note that "special" is the adjective of "species"; there's an interesting backstory to this in traditional logic I won't bore you with now).
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:28 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Logic and philosophy
It's a highly intelligent piece which deals with representations, metarepresentations, moral choices, the nature of fiction and rhetoric, individual freedom, personal responsibility, and most of all, the worth of a life.... And what is more, rather than being an arid intellectual enterprise (a phrase I'm not entirely happy with - intellectual enterprises are rarely arid), you end up caring about all the people involved, from the bus driver to the main characters.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:01 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 10, 2007
Category: General Science
Janet Stemwedel at Adventures in Science and Ethics has asked scientists what they (as opposed to philosophers) mean by "theory". I intend to write how philosophers have use the term sometime soon, when this grant application is done and a paper revised, but if you are a scientist, go visit her and comment.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:27 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 8, 2007
Category: Logic and philosophy
From David Hume's Natural History of Religion Sect III (found via Dennett's Breaking the Spell): There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good- will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of the prosopopoeia in poetry; where trees, mountains and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:20 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 7, 2007
Category: Creationism
Sarkar uses the topic as a way to riff off matters of epistemology, the sociology of science and the use of science in society. I haven't seen the published version, but I read an earlier ms copy and on that basis I can recommend it as a more technical and philosophical approach to the topic.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General Science
Since the 1980s "Dawkins reforms" (named after the minister for "education" here, not Richard Dawkins) Australian universities have become increasingly vocational education systems, for industrial purposes, not for cultural education.... One university I attended (go see my web page if you want to guess which one) stopped teaching classical languages entirely, and reduced European languages to a rump.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:48 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 6, 2007
Category: General Science
As a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and in her professional career in the Navy and NASA's Space Shuttle program, she has served over 20 years with an unblemished record.... She has been married for 19 years, although she and her husband had separated a few weeks ago. Considering both her personal and professional life, these alleged events are completely out of character and have come as a tremendous shock to our family.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:59 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Administrative
This blog is for whatever happens to pass through my frontal lobes at the moment, and 3.... Anyone want to discuss intelligent design of creationist antivaccination?
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:26 AM • 8 Comments •
February 5, 2007
Category: Creationism
He was trying to argue with Intelligent Design folk, and they brought String Theory up as a case of science that doesn't have any testable evidence I responded thus [names removed to protect the innocent] you are stepping in deep, very cold, and very dank waters.... ID fails to be science for many reasons, not least being the lack of an active research program and a failure to discriminate its explanation from one without ID involving only selectionist explanations.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:06 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Basic Concepts
The Biohumanities Project of Paul Griffiths, of which I am a minor part, has a page up of talks and discussions at conferences and workshops, recorded for podcasting.... Some of the crispy goodness: A conference on mechanism and reduction, a conference on the philosophy of ecology, and a conference on evidence based medicine, plus talks on emotion, essentialism and biological hierarchies.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:14 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 4, 2007
Category: Humor
A nice little soap opera has developed, according to NASA Watch, in which one female astronaut tried to kidnap (so the police allege) another female astronaut because she was jealous of the relationship the latter had with a male astronaut. She sprayed her victim with pepper spray, and wore a wig and trenchcoat (don't parking garages have automatic trenchcoat recognition algorithms?).
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:54 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Politics
In Yet Another Example of Our Continuing Slide into Mediocrity, the UK government has slashed funds for the British Library, which is going to cut access hours and have to charge researchers. And this from a Labour government, supposedly the champion of public education and culture.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:15 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: History
Wiley, again...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:38 AM • 3 Comments •
February 3, 2007
Category: History
Nor is it fitting that he should appear to have framed the law by contention, but in an orderly manner. For the transaction of public affairs does not demand, as a reward of his labors, the clamor of theatrical applause, but the law destined for the salvation of the people.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:18 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Creationism
Now Laurent Penet has (I trust faithfully - my French is non-existent, as I found out in Paris) turned it into a French essay, along with Mark Isaak's Bombadier Beetle essay (English version here).... Thanks to Laurent - now I can die happy, having been translated into at least one language other than English (and believe me, translating the contents of my head into English is no small task).
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:54 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
What would you say if a government kidnapped someone in a foreign country, who had by their own admission done nothing against their own country, nor broken laws in the country they were kidnapped from, nor of the country they came from, locked them up in solitary confinement for 5 years, tortured them incessantly, refused to give them independent medical treatment, access to their family, lawyers of their own choosing, and refused to charge them with any criminal acts in defiance of their own legal system and constitution?... Australian David Hicks, and scores of others, have languished in these conditions for five years in defiance of the Geneva Convention, all international and American or Australian domestic laws, and common decency, in Guantanemo Bay, because someone in the American military decided Hicks, who trained with the Taliban before they were invaded was a terrorist.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:14 PM • 10 Comments •
Category: General Science
Here's a tastefully done blog on sex and physics: The Physics of Sex: Where Science and Intimacy Collide. They discuss what beds are best, how lubricants work, optimal strategies for mating based on network theory, and so on. It's a lot of fun.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:46 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Rob Skipper has a relatively accessible post on what Fisher and others think the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection means. The old joke has it that it's neither fundamental nor a theorem, but Rob goes into more detail based on a seminar he and his students did.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:57 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 2, 2007
Category: Evolution
Giraffes have played a crucial role in the evolution of evolutionary theory...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:35 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Let us state at the outset - Darwin was very concerned about the category of "species", and one of his major claims, both in print and in his correspondence with scores of taxonomists, was that evolution is based on a radical claim about species: they are more or less permanent varieties, rather than constraints on the limits of variation....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:42 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Species and systematics
Canadian blogger, columnist and science fiction writer Ed Willett has a nice piece on some taxonomic jokes that have a point, entitled Lazarus, Elvis, zombies and Jimmy Hoffa.... Willett discusses "Lazarus taxa", which are taxonomic groups that are found , either today or as fossils, long after the first instances become unrecorded in the fossil record.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:22 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2007
Category: Evolution
I don't have the comfort of knowing I followed the conventions, because between his death and now, things have changed dramatically, and the conflicting social rules are incoherent - feminists say one thing, the many religious and psychological "experts" all say something different (to each other), and of course there's the generational differences. The only family values I think are universal are: love your kids, and try to prepare them for the world you think is coming, protect them from harm, and teach them the rules of the surrounding society, not so they can blindly follow them, but so they know what they are dealing with whether they agree or not.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:33 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks