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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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December 31, 2007

Happy new year

Category: Administrative

It is midnight on January 1 here in Australia. There's a loud party next door (young folks, heh). So I hope you all have a good year and thanks for reading me in 2007....

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December 30, 2007

Judging experiments

Category: Philosophy of Science

This is a field in which I am largely ignorant, so I will just report it and leave the commenters to interpret. Collider blog has a discussion of an idea reported by Charm &c. in a paper at arXiv...

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Follies d'Air

Category: History

The New York Times has a long overdue article on the stupidity of airport security measures for those flying to, within or in markets affected by the United States post-9/11. Pointing out that the security screening at airports in...

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December 29, 2007

The Golden Compass - a lead ballon?

Category: Creationism

Henry Gee reviews the Golden Compass, and comes up with largely the same conclusions I would have had I been as insightful as he. A quote: It’s a long time since I read the book, The Northern Lights, on...

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Having PC heroes

Category: General Science

One of the things about being a Mac user, for 20-odd years now, is that you just like your corporate hero. Sure, they stuffed up on a number of hardware releases, and their delay in getting a multitasking OS...

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December 28, 2007

The chronicle of 2200

Category: History

Found in an old manuscript in the ruins of an old university: Well this year has been pretty much the same as those that went before. We planted crops, most of which failed because we only had the poverty...

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Vedantic creationism

Category: Creationism

Just to demonstrate that it is not only the Christians who have their religious fundamentalists opposing science, here's a piece that claims that the Vedas are the source of all true scientific knowledge. OK, guys, inventing zero was cool,...

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December 27, 2007

A tax on gorilla iconography? Oh noes...

Category: Biodiversity

Greg Laden is reporting that Rwanda is taxing companies that use gorillas in their advertising, in order to pay for their conservation. Unfortunately, or fortunately if you are an albino silverback in Australia, this only applies to Rwandan companies....

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Conspiracy theories

Category: Logic and philosophy

The online journal Episteme has a special issue out on conspiracy theories. Examples include God as a conspiracy theory, the 9/11 WTC "controlled demolition" theory and questions of rationality of those who engage in them. Late note: This is...

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The iron rod of religion

Category: Religion

Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated, probably by Islamist extremists. While no saint, she clearly stood for democratisation in Pakistan, and all hell is likely to break out there now. Today, I saw The Golden Compass, after reading the book...

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December 25, 2007

What makes special creationism special?

Category: Creationism

It is the default opinion of those who accept evolution and those who deny it, that before Darwin, or Lamarck at any rate, everyone was a special creationist. Even Darwin implies in the Origin that if one is not...

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December 24, 2007

The man who changed the world

Category: General Science

OK, so today is Christmas day, December 25. On this day* a man was born who changed the world. He affected a growing tradition that has left no part of the world untouched, for good or ill. He revealed...

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December 22, 2007

Sunday sermon: on cultural isolation

Category: Creationism

Okay, so the Eighth Day Inventism calendar as rolled around to coincide our Holy day with one of yours. We Inventists are open minded people and often try to reach out to you heathen irreligious puppy grinding moral monsters....

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December 21, 2007

Haneef: the final chapter

Category: Politics

Well the mills of God and the justice system grind exceeding fine, but they sometimes come up with the right conclusion. Haneef has been given back his visa, as was obviously going to happen from the beginning. Ex-minister Kevin...

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Thank the fates! The RQF is dead

Category: Philosophy of Science

The previous Australian government, in its ongoing quest to out-mediocre the rest of the world, had instituted a "research Quality Framework", liberally taken from a failed exercise in Britain. Now, the new government has declared it dead. It will...

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The year in review

Category: Administrative

Philosophy isn't one of those things that makes great breakthroughs that are recognised at the time. Generally something is thought of as a significant development much later, after it becomes obvious that people are engaging with it, like the...

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December 20, 2007

Taking drugs to enhance cognitive performance

Category: History

Janet and Shelley have opened up the question of whether students and others should use drugs to enhance their cognitive performance. Janet thinks one shouldn't, and Shelley thinks that, in the absence of bad side effects, one might as...

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December 19, 2007

My species article online at RNCSE

Category: Evolution

A little while back I published an article on species concepts in Reports of the National Center for Science Education, and I just discovered that it is available on the web. This is actually abetter format than the published...

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Levitt on Fuller

Category: Creationism

As I mentioned earlier, I love a good book review if it excoriates a stupid book. Norman Levitt, of Rutgers University, has an absolutely lovely piece of critical invective for Steve Fuller's defense of Intelligent Design here. Fuller is...

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December 18, 2007

Wilko on Wikio

Category: Administrative

I received an email telling me I'm number 20 on the list of influential science blogs, according to Wikio, a European site that ranks according to links and readership, I gather. The irony of a philosopher being a high...

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Traditions in academe

Category: Evolution

PZ Murghl has challenged me to explain why there are theology departments in universities. Of course, most universities lack theology departments, and some, like the Princeton Theological Seminary, have been hived off their home institution. Back when I actually...

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December 17, 2007

Species concepts really matter

Category: Evolution

Sorry I haven't blogged for a bit - I've been on the road, err, sky for a while. So it turns out that Texas, which seems to be the source of much antiscience reaction these days, has yet another...

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December 14, 2007

A letter to a high school student

Category: Creationism

It's a dangerous thing to let philosophers talk to high school students, in the main, for we tend to drown our audience in terminology and deep concepts (many of which turn out to be not so deep), but I...

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December 11, 2007

How to review a book

Category: Humor

From Henry Gee's blog: I had thought that people who write marketing and advertising blurb for publishers occupied a rung on the scala naturae slightly above creationists. This may be true, but whatever the height of their perch, it...

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December 10, 2007

Do bacteria think?

Category: Evolution

Let's suppose there is a game, say, baseball. This game is named and described for the ways that adult humans with bats, balls, and fields, behave normatively, as written up in an authoritative manual. Everybody knows what baseball is,...

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Why do they kill?

Category: Evolution

Just to head off the obvious: Do people kill because their religion or ideology tells them that nonbelievers are subhuman? Yes. Do people go to war because their religion or ideology tells them it is their patriotic duty? Yes....

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December 9, 2007

Gosse is online

Category: Creationism

For those who wish a copy of Gosse's famous Omphalos, I have uploaded it to Internet Archive. It's still only a PDF, but I hope that the IA folks will do an OCR. Many thanks to Noelie Alito for...

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December 8, 2007

X-phi in the NYT

Category: Logic and philosophy

Courtesy of Brian Leiter's blog comes a link to an article by Kwame Anthony Appiah in the New York Times about X-phi, or as it's better known, Experimental Philosophy. This is an approach to thought experiments that tries to...

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If they do this, I never need to use a M$ product again

Category: Administrative

The sole reason that I have any Microsoft products on my machine at all, is compatibility with Endnote. Once upon a time, Endnote was equally capable with a number of word and document processors, but now it only works...

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A personal revelation

Category: Politics

John, hear me. What? Who said that? It is I, God. Oh come on. PZ, is that you? I'm not buying it. It is I, God. Look, I'll prove it. [Clouds in the sky form the letters "Yep, It's...

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December 7, 2007

Rendition, lies and video tape

Category: Politics

I'm angry. The business with the CIA and the torture tape leaves me angry. Why oh why have the Democrats not immediately impeached Bush, Cheney, the Attorneys General involved, the Secretaries of State and Foreign Affairs, the heads of...

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Couple of popular articles of mine

Category: Administrative

Anyone who has access to COSMOS magazine, published in Australia, will be able to find an article of mine on what good philosophers of science are for science. If you have a copy, scan it and send it to...

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December 5, 2007

When academics attack

Category: Evolution

I love a good academic stoush, so long as I'm just watching and not involved either as an antagonist or as collateral damage. Recently, Steven Pinker published a book, The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human...

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December 4, 2007

Virgin births

Category: Evolution

Forget about the season; virgin births can happen any time of year... and anywhere. So there is an Ask a Scienceblogger question about virgin births. In zoology this is called "parthenogenesis" (which means "virgin birth"), and in botany it...

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December 3, 2007

Nationalism and evolution

Category: Evolution

Way back in the 1910s, when human evolution was poorly known, some trickster, probably Charles Dawson, its discoverer, set up a hoax: Piltdown man. This was enthusiastically accepted by many British experts because it made Britain, and in particular,...

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December 2, 2007

Dyspepsia and swallowing crap

Category: Creationism

The Institute for Intellectual Disco Dancing has spun its recent debacle at Minnesota thus: The dyspeptic and ad hominem blogger/biologist Dr. P.Z. Myers was there and brought a Darwinist claque. Note that in passing it is not a fallacy...

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December 1, 2007

Such a short honeymoon

Category: Logic and philosophy

[Australian politics: look away] Oh dear. It took only seven days for the shine to wear off the Labor victory. Julia Gillard has outlined the priorities for education: computers and trades training centres in schools. Yep, that's right, the...

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Lynch is a winner

Category: Humor

This guy is a great drinker, ranconteur, and wit, all with an Irish accent. It turns out he's also a great teacher....

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