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.
March 31, 2008
Category: Evolution
While we're on the topic of animals that act like humans, consider this very sad, very famous case: Nim Chimpsky. Raised to be a human boy, when the funds ran out and Nim got to the age equivalent of...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:15 PM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: General Science
So we're all such cosmopolitan nerds, blogging away... here's a guy (a friend of mine, actually) who has been doing a regular web column on Southern Hemisphere Astronomy for ten years. Give it up please for the well-bearded over-educated...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:49 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 30, 2008
Category: General Science
Watch the video under the fold, from Chang Mai in Thailand. There's a moment where you realise what the elephant is representing, and a shock that comes when you see that it is representing something. I don't know if...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 8:42 PM • 30 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 28, 2008
Category: General Science
Ernst Rutherford, the "father" of nuclear physics, once airily declared "In science there is only physics. All the rest is stamp collecting". By this he meant that the theory of physics is the only significant thing in science. Such...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:29 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Humor
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:57 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 27, 2008
Category: History
My friend and colleague Neil Levy has inaugurated the first edition of a journal devoted to a new field, Neuroethics, the first edition of which is available to all for free here. Neil has a convincing introductory editorial, arguing...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:09 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 25, 2008
Category: Biodiversity
Okay, so it's the Wilkins Ice Shelf, but it's even more important than news about me. The 6000 square mile (15,540 km2) ice shelf named for Sir Hubert Wilkins, the famous Australian Antarctic explorer (and very possibly some kind...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:21 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 24, 2008
Category: Creationism
I once sat across the table from Alex Rosenberg, a well known philosopher, who argued persuasively that one cannot be both a Christian and accept natural selection. I think Alex intended this as a reductio for Christianity, as natural...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:03 PM • 77 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
This is a nice review in New Scientist, obviously "framed" more in sorrow and confusion than in anger, which ends with Throughout the entire experience, Maggie and I couldn't help feeling that the polarised audience in the theater was...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:23 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
So here's a neo-Thomist talking about species, and not getting it due to (i) prior metaphysical commitments, and (ii) not understanding Aristotle - dude, he never called anything a species, not in the biological sense. Eidos and genos were...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:26 AM • 35 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 21, 2008
Category: General Science
On the one hand you have Jake Young discussing the role of expertise in public debates, concluding that maybe experts shouldn't expect that information from knowledgeable folk will automatically influence the uneducated. On the other hand, this......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:14 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
They see in 12 colours and using polarised light, they move at the speed of a bullet. Go read about them at Not Exactly Rocket Science. Yes, they are the coolest inverts......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:37 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 20, 2008
Category: Creationism
PZ Mydfgsers tried to see Expelled, Ben Stein's silly film about ID. He was asked to leave by some uniformed guard or policeman, as the producers had him on a Watch List or something. They let his family, and...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 9:35 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 19, 2008
Category: Race and politics
So one of the most inspiring and intelligent political speeches of my time, comparable with Kennedy's, has been delivered while I was either in transit or sleeping (I can't work out which). I have read it, and I have...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 7:55 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 18, 2008
Category: Fiction
When I was about 8, I read in a newspaper that one of my favourite short stories, "The Sentinel", by Arthur C. Clarke, was to be made into a movie by some film maker I never heard of. I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 10:39 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 17, 2008
Category: Biodiversity
The ever-interesting blog of Moselio Schachter, Small Things Considered has another post of thought-provoking microbes: hyperthermophiles. These wee beasties live at 90°C in anoxic conditions. I particularly liked the passing comment: Growth and division of these organisms was observed...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 4:14 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
So, here I am in Phoenix airport, waiting to go back home, and I read T Ryan Gregory's snark about me and barcoding. Apparently I am to learn only from his blog posts and not from (perish the thought)...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:48 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Ever since Gould's Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, the popular view has been that the Cambrian was an "explosion" of living forms, and for some, usually but not always creationists, this has been touted...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:13 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
The European Space Agency is doing lots of interesting work for biology, in particular ecology. This map allows you to zoom into any place on the planet to see the land cover. [From Eureka Science News]...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:57 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 15, 2008
Category: Logic and philosophy
Sorry that I didn't liveblog today. The room was too far to carry my Mac, and I was tired damn it. Blame Lynch, Todd Grantham, Michael Ghiselin and Roberta Millstein among others, who all made me drink beer. No,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:04 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 14, 2008
Category: Biodiversity
Roberta is a great philosopher from UC Davis and she's talking about the notion of populations....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:43 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
Jon is a Utah biologist. His talk is on population genetics....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 6:09 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
This is a session on paleontology that I missed the start of because I had to go get my power supply....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 5:04 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
Jay is an ecological philosopher. He wants to sketch how ecologists have used boundaries, and outline both a skepticism and an interactive approach....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:30 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Biodiversity
Lunch being had we crowd into a new room to hear Stephen Peck, a biologist from Brigham Young University down the road a ways in Provo. Stephen is talking about ecological boundaries....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:28 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Bill Wimsatt is somewhat of a hero around here and for good reason. He is perhaps one of the most influential under-published philosophers of biology. Today he's talking about modularity in biological and cultural evolution....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:35 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Jim Griesemer is one of my favourite philosophers. Here he's discussing the work of Herbert Simon on dynamical boundaries....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:07 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Monica Piotrowski (Utah) also is talking about DNA Barcoding. She starts with a child's coin sorter. Imagine that it's a bug-sorter, sorting by DNA samples. What does the child now have? She claims Barcoders must have a species concept...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:45 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
Brent Mishler is a very nice guy who is wrong on a few things - Phylocode, species, and so on - but he's absolutely right about barcoding. He's talking today about so-called DNA barcoding and species concepts....
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:22 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 13, 2008
Category: Evolution
I have just sat through one of the most teeth clenchingly bad philosophy talks, given on phylogenetics by a philosopher who has never read anything sensible on phylogenetics to phylogenetic systematists. One of the last mentioned leant over to...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 11:18 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 11, 2008
Category: Administrative
John Lynch took me to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum yesterday, and made me walk. Naturally I forgot my camera, so I can't show you the really cool hummingbirds, or the cougar/puma (it has a split personality) or the bighorn...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:32 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 10, 2008
Category: Administrative
Yesterday John Lynch (he of the Stranger Fruit) took me to see the Arizona Museum of Natural History in Mesa, which had some truly excellent displays of the feathered dinosaurs from China (they wouldn't let me photograph them, though,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:31 PM • 18 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 9, 2008
Category: Administrative
Yeah, yeah, OK, I know I've been absent except on the comments, but I'm traveling, all right? Everything I have worth saying gets said over beer or whiskey, tonight to Jim Lippard and John Lynch, the latter of whom...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:21 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 7, 2008
Category: Humor
Below the fold is a humorous and possibly true account of reality TV trying to include geologists. With appropriate substitutions, the same thing could be said of any academic......
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 3:30 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolution
I (and apparently Jim Lippard) went to see Dawkins' talk based on his The God Delusion, which I have critiqued before. I was impressed at the technique. It was definitely the very best Revivalist Sermon I have seen. I...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 1:12 AM • 211 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 6, 2008
Category: Biodiversity
After a three day workshop on the future and nature of taxonomy (or systematics; I'm still unconvinced there's a difference) I am exhausted and enthused. The former because of the massive amounts of beer we drank, and the latter,...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 12:13 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
March 3, 2008
Category: Administrative
So I'm here, and after a long sleep I got to see some marvellous AZ scenery before the camera died. I'm staying with my mate Malte, who was a costudent of Gareth Nelson with me some years back, Tomorrow...
Posted by John S. Wilkins at 2:20 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
