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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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August 31, 2007

Are species theoretical objects?

Category: Evolution

A lot of people have said something like "species are the units of evolution". What does this even mean? So far as I can tell, nobody has really fleshed this out....

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August 29, 2007

Christianity Today = Inanity Today?

Category: Creationism

Oh honestly. Christianity Today reports the travel of the Australopithecine fossil "Lucy" to the US with the closing paragraph: It should be interesting to see what the interest in Lucy is, given that according to opinion polls roughly half...

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August 28, 2007

In defence of Keanu, and the 5th best scientist

Category: History

So they're remaking The Day the Earth Stood Still? So what? I have more respect for Keanu Reeves after seeing the recent film A Scanner Darkly, and anyway he's much better an actor than Will Ferrell, who did such...

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August 24, 2007

Verne Grant died

Category: Evolution

I'm very late to this, but one of the significant figures in the synthesis, Verne Grant, died in May. Grant's book The Origin of Adaptations (1963) was one that influenced a lot of theorising about evolution. His essay on...

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War on Abstractions

Category: Politics

As part of the "War on Drugs" an entire family of hydroponics sellers, selling legally available material, were sentenced to prison without parole. Gary Tucker has just been released after a ten year stretch and confiscation of all his...

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August 23, 2007

Tolerance and reason

Category: Logic and philosophy

The "angry atheist" debate has broken out again, like a fire that smolders on until it finds new fuel. I am moved to make a few points, which are worth all you paid for them. 1. There is an...

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New paper on bacterial speciation

Category: Biodiversity

You'll remember, because you have all memorised my blog going back two years, that I blogged on what microbial species are before, and have a paper on that subject coming out in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences....

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August 22, 2007

New ape fossil

Category: Creationism

The National Geographic and the news services are touting a new ape fossil found in Ethiopia as "forcing a rethink on human evolution". As usual, the headlines are hyperbolic. This ape is fragmentary, and so far only teeth and...

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The Essentialism Story

Category: Evolution

Historian Mary P. Winsor published recently (2006b, in the December 2006 edition, but it just came out) a paper discussing how the Essentialism Story was constructed by Arthur Cain, Ernst Mayr, and David Hull. The Essentialism Story is the...

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August 21, 2007

I aten't dead

Category: Administrative

... I'm teaching. First years. Cognitive science. It turns out that a lot of what I thought was common knowledge isn't common at all. And what I count as a simple introduction leaves a lot of folk behind. Now...

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August 18, 2007

Rudd's strip joint visit

Category: Politics

I do not care if a politicians visits a strip club. In fact, a politician that did it and owns up without embarassment would be a good choice to pick, because you know he's not going to pull that...

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August 15, 2007

Icon for Blogging Peer Reviewed research

Category: Administrative

Dear readers, Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily has suggested that we have a universally available icon to indicate that the blogger is blogging about peer reviewed research, and he has created a discussion blog at BPR3. Please go make...

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My species definitions reader is accepted for publication

Category: Evolution

I have a book forthcoming, Species definitions: a sourcebook from antiquity to today, which gives and commentates definitions of "species" in logic and biology for 2,500 years, from Plato to Templeton and beyond. It's designed as a reader for...

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Popper peeps papally at UD

Category: Creationism

Popper's view of science has been supplanted by a number of later views, not least being the sociological accounts of Kuhn and Lakatos, which, being sociological, don't tell us what is science but only how it proceeds descriptively. Prescriptive views of science are much more nuanced than Popper these days, and they lack a simple slogan like the cry of "falsifiability!" They typically focus on the heuristics (rules of inference) and how they have developed overall and in particular disciplines. If you want to argue that ID is science, go read van Fraassen, or Hacking, or Giere, or Laudan and get back to me.

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August 12, 2007

New paper by moi

Category: Biodiversity

I have a review of the centenary festschrift for Mayr, published by the National Academies of Science, in the latest Biology and Philosophy here. I worked pretty hard on this one, so it's more than your average dashed off...

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Lego me too!

Category: Administrative

I had to. They made me do it. Yes, I'm smoking again, but I'll give up soon, I promise. The grumpy expression is because I'm teaching......

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An essay on the evolution of human evolution

Category: Creationism

Laelaps has a very nice essay that ranges from the number of ribs humans have, the book of Genesis, creationism, and the variety of stories told about human evolution from the nineteenth century to now. Go read it. It's...

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August 11, 2007

What is an individual?

Category: Basic Concepts

Rob Wilson has a new entry up at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, entitled "The Biological notion of an individual". It discusses an interesting problem, one that goes back to discussions by Julian Huxley in 1911. What is an...

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August 8, 2007

Update on the Brazilian primate researcher case

Category: Biodiversity

Nature [subscription required] is reporting that Brazilian ecologists are threatening a strike if Marc van Roosmalen is not released. You'll recall that I posted on his case before. Van Roosmalen is a maverick primate researcher who has effectively been...

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Apes don't read philosophy

Category: History

I'm home sick, so I'm shirking duties and came across one of my favourite film scenes of all time:...

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A blog worth reading

Category: Logic and philosophy

Kate Devitt, a PhD student at Rutgers, as a rather wonderful blog, Mnemosynosis, on matters relating to memory. She's got at present a very interesting post on bacterial cognition worth reading....

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August 7, 2007

The inimitable Mr Spencer

Category: Evolution

I have a soft spot for Herbert Spencer [see also here]. Supposedly the founder of social Darwinism and the precursor to American libertarianism and justifier of the robber barons of the Gilded Age, he has been the whipping boy...

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[Philosophy of] science blogging

Category: General Science

I've been pretty quiet of late. In part this is because I've been travelling with little internet access, but also it's because I'm teaching a subject I haven't studied in years, and because I was asked to write a...

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August 3, 2007

Home again

Category: Administrative

So I'm home from Ish, and the front part of my brain is giddy and tired while the rest has just shut down. I don't travel well, I'm afraid. One thing that I came back fired up over are...

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