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.
September 30, 2007
Category: Humor
The arch-Enemy of all humanity, PZ Mocals, has posted what he no doubt thinks is a funny skit. I told him good, I did. There's no way we can tolerate this attack of godlessness....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:31 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 28, 2007
Category: Administrative
Stay tuned after the break as we will be showing the following specials, rated R for Reason. Suitable for 15 years and over......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:41 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
I keep forgetting to check the "unpublished" list. If you put a link in, or use certain terms, the spam filters will hold it for approval. I am forgetful, and haven't checked for a while, so apologies to those...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:56 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: History
There's been a lot of media spin and unthinking objections to the visit of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the US. He was called the "modern Hitler", for example. This strikes me as both unthinking and dangerous. Ahmadinejad is his...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:43 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 25, 2007
Category: Administrative
Over the past three years or so I have been trying to get an academic career going, at the tender age of (then) 49 (now 51). I have applied for a number of positions while working as a postdoc...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:30 PM • 36 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 24, 2007
Category: Biodiversity
This is a nice post by Christopher Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms, a kiwi studying spider systematics (and what's not to love about that; cephalopods be buggered!) on the species of moas that used to live in New Zealand....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:50 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 23, 2007
Category: Administrative
... an email archiver that sorts through the several tens of thousands of emails I have received in the past fifteen years and makes it all a nice searchable archive. If it would automatically archive from the current folders,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:49 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
It is unclear if he had any last words....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:17 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 22, 2007
Category: Evolution
On Friday I assessed an essay by a masters student on the evolution of reciprocity and altruism (she cleverly introduced a notion of benevolent behaviour rather than "altruism" in social contexts, to avoid confusion with genetic altruism. Then today...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:07 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
One of the things I have previously discussed (see the "Best of ET" tab) is microbial species concepts. Two new papers have come out on this, and it seems to be a hot research topic right now....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:45 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 21, 2007
Category: Creationism
Jason Rosenhouse, of Evolutionblog, has posted a rather snarky review of a book review by the historian and philosopher Ian Hacking that was published in The Nation. Jason titled his comment "How not to defend evolution". Here's my take...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:12 AM • 38 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 16, 2007
Category: Biodiversity
All the strangers look like family All the family looks so strange The only constant I am sure of Is this accelerating rate of change — Peter Gabriel, Downside-Up, from the Ovo Album Creek Running North has a delightful...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:09 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 14, 2007
Category: General Science
When the Republicans began their deconstruction of American democracy, under Newt Gingrich, one of the immediate targets was the emasculation of the Office of Technology Assessment. Since that time, the Republicans have mangled, misused and rhetorically denied any science...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:33 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
Eagle-eyed readers will note a new tab above this post (and all others if I have done it properly) which list the very best of Evolving Thoughts - the meaty posts that will have long term value (as much...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:00 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 13, 2007
Category: Creationism
Larry Caldwell, a well-known proponent of antievolutionism, tried and failed to get "the controversy" taught in the school district of his kids' school. He failed, so he sued the school board because he was "discriminated against... for being Christian"....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:55 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
As a silverback, I am always intrigued when you humans start to debate our nature, or put us in silly films (not that the one with Sigourney was silly - any film she's in is fine by me. We...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:00 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Recently, that is since 1975 or so, the view has arisen that a living thing is something that satisfies several conditions....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:41 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 11, 2007
Category: Humor
Ifnormation: what everybody thinks they know, if they don't think too much......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:48 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 10, 2007
Category: Logic and philosophy
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an online, but highly regarded, source of review articles on philosophical topics, edited by Ed Zalta. Three new articles have popped up lately that have attracted my attention:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:42 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 8, 2007
Category: Basic Concepts
Now we turn to the modern accounts of life. In 1828, Friedrich Wöhler produced uric acid without using “kidney of man or dog”. Prior to that time, there was considered to be something different between organic chemistry and inorganic...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:32 AM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 7, 2007
Category: Humor
theotre: a church or temple, wherein gods are displayed and perform......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:19 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
So, you thought that Colony Collapse Disorder, which is causing billions of dollars in losses in American agriculture, was an act of nature? You poor fools! It's a plot, I tell yez. We Australians have hardier bees than you...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:14 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
COSMOS magazine has an interesting article sure to stir up trouble by suggesting that, among other things, global organic farming would necessitate clearing all remaining forests and even then a substantial portion of the earth's population would starve. I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:51 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 6, 2007
Category: Administrative
I have, I must confess, started a number of projects here that I haven't finished. Teaching is getting the better of me (and no, I'm not going to put my lectures down on cognitive science, as I do them...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:54 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
"It is incredible what people say under the compulsion of torture, and how many lies they will tell about themselves and about others; in the end whatever the torturers want to be true is true." Friedrich Spee von Lagenfeld,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:31 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
Carl Zimmer has one of his usually clear and precise articles on recent work on the nature of life, focussing on the work of Carol Cleland, who is at the National Astrobiology Institute, despite reduced funding for actual science...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:03 AM • 22 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 2, 2007
Category: Creationism
I have decided that I am sick and tired of the antievolutionists. When I got into this game about 15 years or more ago, I thought that if we just argued and presented information about what evolution really is,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:18 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 1, 2007
Category: Administrative
If you're reading this on "Science Blog", be aware that the site is stealing, copying without proper attribution, and generally parasitising real blogs, including mine. Go to the real Science Blogs site for information on the actual blogs. Although...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:27 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
Continuing on from my last post, let's consider the modes of speciation that are called into account for the existence of species....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:15 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
