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One man's struggle against impermanence
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...
I also have an Australia-focussed blog: The Drought Resistant Philosopher
The previous instantiation of this blog is accessible here.
May 30, 2007
Category: Creationism
A while back, I wrote a series of posts (listed at the end) on whether or not creationists were in fact being rational in their choices of who to believe about science, based on what information they had available to them as they were growing up.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:45 AM • 15 Comments •
Category: Evolution
Consider what happened to the abundant remains of Titanotheres and other magnificent White River fossils in the South Unit of the Badlands in South Dakota: Badlands National Monument was established in 1939, outside of the reservation boundary.... These skeletons were commonly targeted by the bombers.� The US Air Force and, later, the National Guard gunners, deliberately blew to smithereens the fragile bones of great animals that had roamed the earth 40 million years ago. �Hundreds of fossil resources were destroyed in the bombing efforts,� according to the Park Service information sheet.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:28 AM • 24 Comments •
May 29, 2007
Category: Creationism
A while back, I got to thinking, "What sort of world would it be if Genesis were right?" And so I started casually reading it from time to time as if the final editor of Genesis actually meant the things he allows the text to say.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:10 PM • 16 Comments •
Category: History
Then stop reading and go think about something [else]. Neil Levy is doing a survey of moral judgments which he wants the philosophically uncontaminated to take.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:35 PM • 14 Comments •
Category: Biodiversity
The Missouri Botanical Garden Library has made a Web 2.0 site of botanical works, the Botanicus Digital Library: Botanicus is a freely accessible, Web-based encyclopedia of historic botanical literature from the Missouri Botanical Garden Library.... As always I just love it when someone hands me facsimile copies of ancient publications (although they have some more recent stuff too), all under a Creative Commons license.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:44 AM • •
May 28, 2007
Category: General Science
From which this wonderful quote: There may be rhetoric about the socially constructed nature of Western science, but whenever it matters, there is no alternative.... Even the great public sceptic about the value of science, Prince Charles, never flies a helicopter burning homeopathically diluted petrol, that is, water with only a memory of benzine molecules, maintained by a schedule derived from reading tea leaves, and navigated by a crystal ball.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:53 AM • 2 Comments •
May 27, 2007
Category: Politics
After a slip in which an acquired set of contracts were substantially below what one might expect for trading off terms and conditions, and where her husband opposes such contracts in employment, she has decided, it is reported, to sell off her interest in the Australian company (there's a UK company as well, it seems).... Second, the idea that leaders should be isolated from interactions with the community they are notional representatives of seems to me to imply that we need a professional political class from whom to take representatives.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:07 AM • •
Category: Evolution
This is a term derived from the writings of John Mackie, who thinks that objective moral values would be very odd things, and that people who think they are looking for them are just in error (hence "error theory"). This came up because we were doing the Friday evening drinks thing, wondering whether people were properly self-reporting their reasons for believing X, and I suggested that, in matters of justifying behaviours, they took the behaviours for one reason, and then applied the standard tmeplates for justifying such actions afterwards, and that if we did experimental philosophy to poll the "folk" (a sort of philosophical hoi polloi), they would not be able to give you the real reasons why they acted due to false consciousness.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:14 AM • 10 Comments •
May 26, 2007
Category: Creationism
The recent "What kind of Atheist" posts have led to a discussion on Larry Moran's Sandwalk blog. Go read it, because I'm being as clear there as I'll ever likely be...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:01 AM • 14 Comments •
May 25, 2007
Category: Evolution
I think there will be more atheists than before simply because any increase over nearly none is an increase in absolute terms, but I doubt we will ever see Lennon's society without religion. But secularism - social organisations in which religion does not have undue privileges in setting the policy and law - is, I think, something that not only should be expanded, but can be.
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:03 PM • 7 Comments •
