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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 Sessional Lecturer 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 in 2004, which he has worked into two books. Species Definitions: A Sourcebook (Peter Lang) will come out in 2008; Species: A History of an Idea (University of California Press) will appear, it is hoped, in early 2009. He is also interested in cultural evolution, philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids.

If anyone knows of a tenurable, or even medium term, job in philosophy of biology, let me know. Have library, will travel. The contract ran out ...

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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Category: Administrative
Posted on: September 6, 2007 11:54 PM, by John S. Wilkins

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 "freeform",, so I'd have to do a lot of work to get them down in written form).

Some of the things I intend to one day finish:

  1. The World According to Genesis. Reader Michael Gardner put in a lot of work doing the Abraham story outline for me, but to my shame I haven't had time to add my bits. Sorry Michael - you haven't been forgotten. I aim to cover the patriarchal stories pretty quickly, and then move on to the Moses story and the Exodus story. That will about do it as far as the biblical worldview goes. Maybe I'll finish up looking that the 8th century BCE prophets' worldview. Ezekiel is pretty weird.
  2. The national view of eugenics and selection. This is the missing fourth part of my Darwin and the Holocaust series. The problem is that I have to go refind a bunch of material I haven't read for ten years or more, on the ways various nations cast themselves as being in a Darwinian struggle.
  3. The current series on what life is. I'm working from lecture notes from a couple of years back, so it should be easy to continue.
  4. The theoretical role of "species" - as it occurs to me I will add new material. This is the first rough cut of a paper.
  5. Darwin on species. Initially this was a rebuttal to Peter Dear's book, but there's a lot more to say. Now that I have organised my sourcebook and commentary on species definitions, I really should finalise this.
  6. Basic concepts. I haven't updated these for a bit. Soon, I promise. There have been new entries on other sites, and hell, I may even write one or two of my own. If that doesn't trigger guilt feelings in other bloggers, well, there's always the comfy chair.

Anything else I have left undone? I already checked my fly.

On a different note, I was interviewed by (= "had a long rant with) Carl Zimmer last night for an article he is doing on species concepts. It was great fun, and of course I advanced my own special heresies ike the myth of essentialism at great length. Nice chatting with you Carl.

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Comments

#1

Not to mention that a search of your blog for the word "species" uncovered about 20 posts worthy of inclusion in the anthology....just saying.

Posted by: coturnix | September 7, 2007 12:25 AM

#2

Consider them nominated as a book in themselves...

Posted by: John Wilkins | September 7, 2007 12:43 AM

#3

I am assuming that a lot of that stuff WILL be in your book. Correct?

Posted by: coturnix | September 7, 2007 1:51 AM

#4

If it ever gets written, perhaps it will.

Posted by: John Wilkins | September 7, 2007 2:31 AM

#5

Not more of that blasted Bible stuff! Reading that made me go to that big building where they have all those "books" and you have to show your card to the woman who lets you take the books home for a few weeks, but then you have to bring them back. So I read some books about stuff that previously I chose to remain "ignorant" about, but now I am somewhat less "stupid", but only a little.

Posted by: Susan Silberstein | September 7, 2007 4:04 AM

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