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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.
November 29, 2007
Category: Evolution
The term "radical" is a very loose term. It basically means "something that differs wildly from the consensus" in ordinary usage. So I hope David Williams and Malte Ebach won't take offense if I say that they have a...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:29 AM • 8 Comments •
November 27, 2007
Category: Humor
This little piece by netfriend Richard Harter, who apparently predates coal, serves to demonstrate that philosophers really aren't clever enough at thinking up counterexamples......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:51 AM • 7 Comments •
Category: Politics
This is kicking a man when he's down, but the iPod popped this up to me last night, and I thought how appropriate it is to the election outcome:...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:35 AM • 4 Comments •
November 26, 2007
Category: Philosophy of Science
Brian Leiter is reporting, and the University of Cambridge confirms it, that Peter Lipton, a well known philosopher of science, has died. Leiter will put up an obit later. For now, here is a very good paper of Lipton's...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:51 AM • •
Category: History
This paragraph: This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:40 AM • 17 Comments •
November 25, 2007
Category: Humor
From Henry Gee's blog: Dear Professor Trellis Thank you for your manuscript entitled “On the positively negative interaction between one abbreviation and another abbreviation, conditional on the negatively double-negative interaction between a third abbreviation and one or other of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:35 AM • 4 Comments •
Category: Logic and philosophy
I have a rule (Wilkins' Law #35, I think) that if any scientist is going to draw unwarranted metaphysical conclusions, it will be a physicist, and in particular a cosmologist. Witness Paul Davies in the New York Times. Davies...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:00 AM • 76 Comments •
Category: Administrative
Unlike PZ Moorsch, I don't get much abusive email, because I'm so much more mild mannered than he is. But I got this gem from an Australian using his cousin's South African email account: your feedback on the one...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:52 AM • 13 Comments •
Category: Politics
As I watched the total collapse of the conservatives in the federal election, and the landslide of Labor wins, I mused......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:11 AM • 6 Comments •
November 24, 2007
Category: Evolution
... a book was published that changed the way we thought of biology....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:10 AM • 4 Comments •
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