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.
October 31, 2007
Category: Evolution
To summarise: so far we have three general kinds of explanations of religion. There are sociological explanations in terms of the economic, societal and political conditions under which religions develop. There are psychological explanations in terms of experiences, existential...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:28 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
From J. B. S. Haldane's 1932 The Causes of Evolution: ... I must ... discuss a fallacy which is, I think, latent in most Darwinian arguments, and which has been responsible for a good deal of poisonous nonsense which...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:16 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
Here is an article in Harvard Magazine on bacteria and other wee beasties that make up the bulk of the living world, that is worth reading. It's called "The Undiscovered Planet". Hat tip to Jason Grossman....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:16 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2007
Category: Administrative
The above are icons to be used when blogging on actual peer-reviewed research (as opposed to popular reports or kookery). I had a marginal involvement in this (I made some passing comments early on) so it is with great...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:29 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Here is a wonderful (and for us old fogeys, resonant) essay by Chris Kelly at The Huffington Post on the use of the Geneva Convention by both Nazis and Allies during the second world war. The money quote: In...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:12 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
I actually don't dislike the guy, but this is one of the funniest political ads I've ever seen. For forners (not from Orstraya), it helps to know that Rudd leads the erstwhile socialist party, speaks Mandarin, and is likely to...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:19 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 28, 2007
Category: Evolution
UPDATED: To give some of my colleagues at the University of Queensland some link love, it is being reported that they have sequenced the Queensland lungfish (currently under threat by a proposed dam) opsin genes, showing that they see...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:42 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Michael Ruse has a new article up on creationism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There's not much new to those who know his work, but the following comment resonates - dare I say thunders - in the Science...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:36 AM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 25, 2007
Category: Logic and philosophy
I now turn to the question of explananda - what is it that explanations of religion are adduced to explain?...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:51 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Logic and philosophy
David Chalmers and David Bourget of the Australian National University have a great new resource up of online papers on mind:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:13 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 23, 2007
Category: Humor
According to a book mentioned by Greg Dahlman at blog.bioethics.net. He notes that this makes Stephen Colbert Plato. I think it makes Hilary Clinton Aristotle, and Richard Dawkins Epicurus, although the sequence is a bit messed up....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:53 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
Much to do about the sexual inclinations of a fictional character in the most successful (and I still think, despite the lack of editorial control, one of the classic) children's stories. PZ Mungle has this to say: I really,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:58 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
The estimable Drs David Williams and Malte Ebach have started a blog on Systematics and Biogeography, which supports a recent book they haven't sent me a free copy of yet. Expect much puncturing of pretensions and orthodoxies....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:33 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
An article at Wired by Clive Thompson notes that the antievolutionists use rhetorical ploys, playing on the ambiguity of language to imply that "theory" just means "wild-arsed guess" (or words to that effect). He proposes that we should stop...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:24 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 22, 2007
Category: Evolution
I am attempting to classify the various explanations of the existence of religion, so chime in the comments. They are:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:22 PM • 31 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
Today was the final lecture in my Introduction to Cognitive Science course. Thank the fates it is over. I started this having no real idea of the topic, never having taught what Americans are pleased to call "freshmen" and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:22 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 21, 2007
Category: Administrative
This is a meme started by PZ Mackers. I will exact retribution upon him later. In the meantime, I have been tagged...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:08 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 15, 2007
Category: Administrative
I gave a lecture yesterday on animal minds, and in the course of it tried to show some YouTube videos in Keynote by linking to the pages (tool using crows, by the way, and the excerpt from Life of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:07 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Politics
They are now toadies of the Exclusive Brethren, who fund campaign advertisements for the Liberal Party. Add to this Cardinal George Pell's support, Catholic minister Tony Abbott's attempts to control who can use RU486 on an individual basis (i.e.,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:51 AM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 14, 2007
Category: Politics
So, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions has admitted that Haneef, the Indian muslim doctor who was deported for being of "bad character" because he was related to someone who had peripheral involvement in the London and Glasgow bombings,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:23 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 12, 2007
Category: Biodiversity
The International Herald Tribune worries that Gore's receiving the Peace Prize is going to denigrate the award because it "strays from traditional Nobel definitions of peace work". Huh. As Tom Lehrer said, when Henry Kissinger can win the Peace...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:10 AM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
From an AP Bio student on his vocab quiz (they have to learn word roots, like -itis, -logy, etc. and be able to use the parts in real words w/ definitions): "Mammograb: Examination of the breasts." Via Beautiful Biology,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:45 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
My mate Ian Musgrave, Astroblogger and expert in several fields of science, and his lovely family, are up visiting rellies in Queensland from the arid wasteland that is Adelaide. We all went on a bushwalk and while we were...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:34 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 10, 2007
Category: Politics
It seems that almost nobody can mention Jews without making an inadvertent or deliberate ass of themselves. Most recently, Richard Dawkins put his foot in it in this Guardian article. He said: When you think about how fantastically successful...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:06 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 7, 2007
Category: Administrative
Does anyone who reads this blog have access to JFP from the American Philosophical Association? None of the locals or my usual contacts do, and by the time I can get a subscription going, I'm likely to have missed...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:30 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 6, 2007
Category: Creationism
I found this interesting and still surprisingly modern essay by David Starr Jordan in 1897, at William Tozier's blog, where he had scanned it from a journal called The Arena. They had some good public discussion journals at the...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:08 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 5, 2007
Category: Biodiversity
On Monday night last, Jason Grossman, a philosopher form the Australian National University rang me with an idea. He was coming to my university to give a talk entitled "How to Feyerabend", arguing that Feyerabend was a dadaist rather...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:46 AM • 24 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 4, 2007
Category: Humor
LOLCats are one of those things you either hate or hate really really a lot. But the idea of translating the entire Bible into LOLCatese? Priceless. Someone has way too much spare time (and will we see battles fought...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:11 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 3, 2007
Category: Humor
The estimable and overproductive Neil Levy* at CAPPE at my alma mater, has sent me Terry Pratchett's and Stephen Brigg's book/diary Lu-Tse's Yearbook of Enlightenment 2008, with a note "To help you chart your course into unemployment". For which...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:00 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Administrative
I do these things to (a) impress you all (if I can), (b) get a crossbearing on whether I'm actually part of this culture I find myself inside of, and (c) see if there are any other books I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:57 AM • 27 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 1, 2007
Category: Evolution
Thinking some more about PZ's latest comedic act, I think I see what the problem is....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:26 AM • 108 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
