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John Wilkins is an 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 worked at the University of Queensland, in Australia, before taking up a research fellowship at the University of Sydney. 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 in 2004, which he has worked into two books.
This blog is designed evolved 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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March 31, 2007
Category: Creationism
None will have the cachet of the Spaghetti Harvest, or the discovery of Homo micturans, because you can't get the wood, you know, but they will all be worthwhile relief from the inanity and insanity of our present society.... The story is this: Hooray For That Judge In Florida, an atheist became incensed over the preparation for Easter and Passover holidays and decided to contact the local ACLU about the discrimination inflicted on atheists by the constant celebrations afforded to Christians and Jews with all their holidays while the atheists had no holiday to celebrate.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:46 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Humor
You scored as Existentialism. Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life. "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything...
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:30 AM • 17 Comments •
March 30, 2007
Category: Evolution
Without either downplaying Darwin's contribution or exaggerating it, we can say, Darwin was a scientist in a context, arguing problems set out by others. What else should we have expected?
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:39 AM • 5 Comments •
March 28, 2007
Category: Evolution
Moreover, he happily discusses this developing idea with the leading natural historians and anatomists of the day, including Richard Owen, who was later thought to be an antievolutionist .... It seems likely that Darwin told William Herbert, Hugh Cuming, William Yarrell and John Lubbock At that rate of dissemination, the mere fact that he hadn't yet published his ideas seems irrelevant - most of the scientific establishment already knew.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:57 PM • 7 Comments •
March 27, 2007
Category: General Science
A very bright light, one that illuminated the landscape for kilometers around and was subjectively bright as the sun for a brief second or two, flashed directly in front of me, and as it died, molten pieces fell away, like the shuttle disaster.... As experiences go, it was up there with seeing ball lightning when I was a kid, or the total eclipse in Melbourne that I saw through a break in an otherwise uniform cloud cover, letting me see the umbra move over at speed, while seeing the totality directly.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:28 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Many words in English come directly via Latin or indirectly via French from Latin, and they have a meaning in English that is sometimes quite different from their etymology, occasionally leaching back into French. Two such words are instruction and information, and both have peculiar meanings when used in the context of genetics.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:08 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Biodiversity
Well, it's a nice idea, but they seem to be a bit confused, on the one hand getting the kids to sing about Linnaean ranks, and on the other about five kingdoms, Animals, Plants, Fungi, Archebacteria and Eubacteria. Still, nice to see taxonomy being taught to primary kids, even if the song is excruciatingly cute.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:27 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Biodiversity
As you all may know, I wrote a series of blog entries on microbial species concepts back when I first moved over to Seed, which had previously been on my older blog [links at end].... A report by the AAM entitled Reconciling Microbial Systematics and Genomics raises the issues of what, if anything is to count as a microbial species, in the light of modern genomics.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:08 AM • 2 Comments •
March 26, 2007
Category: History
To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims as these, that it is impossible for the same thing, to be and not to be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five; is pretending to stop the ocean with a bull-rush.... And the same fires, which were kindled for heretics, will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:05 AM • 20 Comments •
Category: Creationism
At Res Ipsa Loquitur comes a tale of a law professor trying to use Cicero to argue that all morality comes from intelligent design.... Read the smackdown by the student, who gives me much hope for the legal profession...
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Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:53 AM • 1 Comments •
